Trustfall is a library based on a simple question - what happens if we can query absolutely anything? If you could join REST APIs and databases with filesystems and dockerfiles? It’s possible in theory because those are all just datasources. Predrag Gruevski is trying to make it easy by building a universal query engine, with pluggable datasources, all in Rust.

This week we dive into Trustfall to figure out how it works. How do you model nearly anything as a datasource? How do you make it easy to extend? And what does it take to optimize a query that’s going to be spread out over multiple systems and potentially multiple servers? Questions, questions, questions - all about the act of asking our systems questions. 😃

–

Trustfall Source: https://github.com/obi1kenobi/trustfall

Cargo Semver Checks: https://crates.io/crates/cargo-semver-checks

How to Query Almost Everything: https://predr.ag/querying/

SemVer In Rust (talk): https://predr.ag/blog/semver-in-rust-tooling-breakage-and-edge-cases/#cargo-semver-checks-lints-are-database-queries-in-disguise

Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices

Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@developervoices/join

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins

Dimitris Kyriakoudis is a researcher, programmer and musician who's combining all three talents to build dedicated music hardware. Specifically a device called the µseq, which reads Lisp programs and uses them to drive synthesizers to make music. In this episode we go through the full platform that he's building, from soldering resistors to an RPi chip, up through writing a Lisp interpreter, to the design ideas that make Lisp a good choice for composing both software and music.

–

uSeq Homepage: https://www.emutelabinstruments.co.uk/useq/

Emute Lab’s Homepage: https://www.emutelab.org/

Buy a uSeq: https://www.signalsounds.com/emute-lab-instruments-useq-live-coding-voltage-generator-eurorack-module/

Build a uSeq (DIY Kit): https://www.thonk.co.uk/shop/emute-lab-useq/

SICP (book): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_and_Interpretation_of_Computer_Programs

Machina Bristronica (expo): https://machinabristronica.uk/

Sonic Pi: https://sonic-pi.net/

Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices

Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@developervoices/join

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins

–

0:00 Intro

2:20 What is µseq?

5:40 Live Coding As Another Instrument

17:42 Why Choose Lisp?

25:03 Different Dialects For Different Musical Tasks?

32:34 Live Coding As Academic Research

44:11 How Do You Fabricate Production Hardware?

49:00 The Triple-E Triangle

1:09:53 How Well Has This Theory Worked Out?

1:20:01 What's This Like To Play Live?

1:25:17 Comparisons With Sonic Pi

1:33:06 Outro

If you want to build really large software systems well, you have to stop thinking of them as just software systems. Beyond a certain size, everything your software touches becomes part of the wider system. You’re part of the system, your users are part of the system, and every other employee & department & priority eventually forms part of that system. And that can make it incredibly difficult to make changes, or even to understand which changes will actually matter.

That might be overwhelming, but there's hope. Understanding how systems work and how to improve them is something that can be learnt, and improved at. So in the pursuit of better systems understanding, I’m joined this week by Diana Montalion, coder, architect, and author of Learning Systems Thinking. She takes us through how she sees systems, and how we can get better at discovering and understanding our own systems, as we both chew through some difficult systems we’ve worked on in the hope of figuring out how to do it better next time…

–

Learning Systems Thinking (book): https://www.amazon.co.uk/Learning-Systems-Thinking-Essential-Professionals-ebook/dp/B0D9KWZRT2

Diana’s Website: https://montalion.com/

Scientific Management (Tailorism): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_management

Jay Wright Forrester: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Wright_Forrester

Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices

Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@developervoices/join

Diana on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianamontalion/

Diana on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dianamontalion

Kris on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/krisajenkins.bsky.social

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

To kick off 2025 we’re looking at Fyrox a game engine built in Rust, largely by one person - Dmitry Stepanov. For an individual project, it’s covered an incredible amount of ground, covering the rendering and animation features you’d expect from a game engine, with some features that might surprise you - like Rust scripting support with hot-reloading.

As we dive into Fyrox, Dmitry explains what it takes to build a game engine, why he chose Rust (and why he’s happy with the choice), and how one person can hope to build a project of that size.

–

Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices

Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@developervoices/join

Fyrox Homepage: https://fyrox.rs/

The Fyrox Book: https://fyrox-book.github.io/

Rapier Physics Engine: https://rapier.rs/

The Mine (on Steam): https://store.steampowered.com/app/898980/The_Mine/

Dmitry’s Engine: https://github.com/mrDIMAS/DmitrysEngine

GJK Collision Detection Algorithm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert%E2%80%93Johnson%E2%80%93Keerthi_distance_algorithm

WPF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation

PICO-8: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins

Integration testing is always a tricky thing, fraught with problems setting up the right environment and attempting to control the system’s state. That’s particularly true when you’re dealing with a mix of software and hardware, and even worse when you don’t have control of what the hardware can do.

This week I’m joined by Dave Lucia of TVLab’s, who’s building systems for testing television software at scale, and it’s a problem that needs a huge variety of techniques to crack it. He’s using cameras, real time video processing, Erlang & Elixir and a host of other tools to make it possible to test a fleet of televisions on demand.

Sometimes good systems revolve around a single big idea; this time it’s a large combination of solutions, coordinated by the BEAM, that gets the job done.

--

TVLabs: https://tvlabs.ai/

Flipper Zero: https://flipperzero.one

ATSC 3.0 “NextGen TV”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_3.0

Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices

Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@developervoices/join

Kris on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/krisajenkins.bsky.social

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Sam Aaron is the creator of Sonic Pi, one of the most unusual software platforms you’ll encounter. It’s a live-coding playground for making music. A tool that lets you write code that defines sounds and musical phrases, and build up a hole program that plays anything from a short bleep to a whole nightclub set. And Sam’s creator has been using it live for years, weaving drum & bass nights out of thin air, all driven by the Ruby-esque he writes.

In this episode we go through Sam’s career path and design journey as we look at what it takes to make a programming language with enough expressivity and productivity to produce music at the speed of Sam’s imagination.

--

Sam’s Sonic Pi Course: https://www.patreon.com/posts/new-introductory-115404746

Sonic Pi: https://sonic-pi.net/

SuperCollider: https://supercollider.github.io/

Overtone: https://github.com/overtone/overtone

Power Gloves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove

Web Audio API: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Audio_API

Tau5: https://www.patreon.com/posts/announcing-sonic-112605951

Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices

Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@developervoices/join

Kris on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/krisajenkins.bsky.social

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Evan Czaplicki—the creator of the Elm programming language —joins me to discuss the state and future of Elm, the friendly, type-safe functional programming language. On many fronts Elm has been a huge success: it’s been popular with new and seasoned programmers alike; it’s helped push several language ideas into the mainstream; it’s been a key part of several successful software businesses and he even found himself employed as a kind of Language Designer in Residence. And yet, the material rewards of a successful open-source project were…lacking. Was he naive? Can an open-source developer stay true to open-source principles and still make a decent living? Is open source being exploited by commercial software businesses? These topics and more tumble out of what has to be the first question in the podcast: What’s happening with Elm?

--

Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices

Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@developervoices/join

ElmLang: https://elm-lang.org/

The Economics Of Programming Languages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ3w_jec1v8

Kris on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/krisajenkins.bsky.social

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

This week we’re going to look at the most essential piece of firmware in a programmer’s toolkit - the brain. I’m joined by Chris Ferdinandi to explore what it’s like to be a programmer with ADHD. It’s an unusual topic for the channel, but the more I spoke to him, the more I wanted to know what coding is like when your brain is wired differently, how we can work more effectively with people with ADHD, and critically, how you manage coders with ADHD. And the answer to that comes full circle, in understanding how coders with ADHD manage themselves…

–

ADHDFTW Homepage: https://adhdftw.com/developer-voices/

Do I Have ADHD? https://adhdftw.com/do-i-have-adhd/

Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices

Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@developervoices/join

Chris on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@cferdinandi

Chris on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/cferdinandi.bsky.social

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Kris on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/krisajenkins.bsky.social

What have we learned from more than a decade of deploying microservices? Was it a good idea? Are we any better at figuring out what a microservice is, or where its boundaries lie? Does splitting things up create fragmentation problems? And is it too late to put the genie back in the bottle? This week we’re going to look at all these questions and more as we reflect on the lessons learnt from this big architectural idea.

This interview was recorded live at GOTO Copenhagen, with two microservice experts and thinkers: James Lewis of Thoughtworks and Ian Cooper of JustEat. 

–

Residuality Theory: https://leanpub.com/residuality

Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices

Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@developervoices/join

Ian on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@[email protected]

James on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/boicy.bsky.social

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/krisajenkins.bsky.social

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins

Pony is a language born out of what should be a simple need - actor-style programming with C performance. On the face of it, that shouldn’t be too hard to do. Writing an actor framework isn’t trivial, but it’s well-trodden ground. The hard part is balancing performance and memory management. When your actors start passing hundreds of thousands of complex messages around, either you need some complex rules about who owns and frees which piece of memory, or you just copy every piece of data and kill your performance. Pony’s solution is a third way - a novel approach to memory management called reference capabilities.

In this week’s Developer Voices, Sean Allen joins us from the Pony team to explain what reference capabilities are, how Pony uses them in its high-performance actor framework, and how they implement a garbage collector without stop-the-world pauses. The result is a language for performant actors, and a set of ideas bigger than the language itself…

–

Pony: https://www.ponylang.io/

The Pony Tutorial: https://tutorial.ponylang.io/

The Pony Playground: https://playground.ponylang.io/

Azul Garbage Collector: https://www.azul.com/products/components/pgc/

Shenandoah Garbage Collector: https://wiki.openjdk.org/display/shenandoah/Main

A String of Ponies (Distributed Actors Paper): https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~scb12/publications/s.blessing.pdf

Garbage Collection with Pony-ORCA: https://tutorial.ponylang.io/appendices/garbage-collection.html

–

Support Developer Voices on Patreon: https://patreon.com/DeveloperVoices

Support Developer Voices on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@developervoices/join

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins

Kris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/

Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins