Versioning! It's a topic that we all deal with on a daily basis, and yet it's a topic that many of us dread. Our ecosystems love semantic versioning, but many of us find it lacking for many of our use cases. In this episode, Kris and Matt are joined once again by Jamie and Steve to talk about versioning. The panel discusses what versioning is, when to use Semantic Versioning, whether identifiers and versions are the same thing, and so much more.

Last week we shipped the first episode of our aftershow, Break. This week we're following it up with another installment! We've got a separate feed up and running for the aftershow, but for now we'll carry the first few episodes of it in this feed. You can listen to the episode by going to: https://break.show/ep/2.

Don't worry supporters, we've got a ton of extra content for you. As per usual with this panel, we got into quite a deep discussion around artificial intelligence, how it relates to meaning, and whether this whole thing might just disappear tomorrow. Not a supporter yet? You can fix that by heading over to https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe where you'll get not only extra content but also higher quality audio. Sign up today!

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

• PrideVer
• Don't Do Agile, Be Agile
• You're not mature enough to release your first version as v1
• XKCD: Workflow
• google/go-github
• jsdate.wtf
• Vehicle registration plates of the United Kingdom
• How To Build An Agent
• Robustness Principle
• Jamie's Salary History
• Matthew's Salary Transparency

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (02:00)
• Chapter 1: An Early Unpopular Opinion! (05:32)
• Chapter 2: What Is A Version? (10:36)
• Chapter 3: Semantic Versioning (22:33)
• Chapter 4: Versioning For Humans (41:59)
• Chapter 5: Choosing A Versioning Scheme (01:04:37)
• Chapter 6: SemVer Metadata (01:11:50)
• Chapter 7: Versioning In The World [Supporter Only] (01:17:24)
• Chapter 8: With AI, Do We Need Versions? [Supporter Only] (01:29:34)
• Chapter 9: Will AI Go The Way of NFTs? [Supporter Only] (01:38:04)
• Chapter 10: Liberal What Accept (02:00:08)
• Chapter 11: Closing Thoughts (02:05:41)
• Appendix UNPOP: Unpopular Opinions (02:07:55)

Hosts

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• (02:00) - Prologue

Welcome to Break, a Fallthrough aftershow! After months of spending time after each recording of Fallthrough chatting, Kris and Matt decided it's time to record some of these chats and publish them to the world! In many ways the show's name is apropos: it's more like a watercooler break than a podcast recording and it's a break from the way we usually record podcast episodes.

In this first episode, Kris, Matt, and Jamie discuss the recording of Fallthrough episode #28. They talk more about OpenAPI and how it relates to REST and hypermedia, what layering brings to the table for APIs, and how change can start with just a single person.

We hope you enjoy this new show and let us know if you like this content and format!

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (00:45)
• OpenAPI (08:15)
• Layering (15:33)
• We Can Build This (33:21)
• Epilogue (38:40)

Hosts

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• (00:45) - Prologue

The web has been around for nearly 40 years, yet despite its massive success, the principles that made it a success still prove elusive to most software engineers today. We've stumbled into a world where so called REST APIs are less RESTful than GraphQL, where most definitions of hypermedia are wrong, and where nuance has been replaced with "well actually". In this episode, Kris is joined by Matt, Jamie, and Steve to discuss REST, hypermedia, the Web (now at version 4.0!), where all of these came from, and so much more.

For our long time listeners, you might remember hearing Kris and Matt discuss a potential after show. Well good news, they've finally recorded an episode! The first episode will be released in this feed, but subsequent episodes will have their own feed. You can listen to the episode by going to: https://break.show/ep/1.

The panel also discusses OpenAPI and how it relates to REST and hypermedia, but that chapter is for supporters only. Hear what the panel has to say about OpenAPI, along with other extended conversations, and higher quality audio! Get access by signing up at https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

• Paper tigers and hidden dragons
• It is okay to use POST
• REST APIs must be hypertext-driven

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (01:28)
• Chapter 1: What even is hypermedia? (02:30)
• Chapter 2: What is REST? (09:48)
• Chapter 3: The Uniform Interface (22:57)
• Chapter 4: Cookies are terrible [Supporter Only] (01:02:53)
• Chapter 5: and Web 4.0 (01:03:43)
• Chapter 6: OpenAPI [Supporter Only] (01:26:27)
• Chapter 7: An interlude and the future of the web [Supporter Only] (01:28:28)
• Epilogue (01:28:32)

Hosts

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• (01:28) - Prologue

In episode 27, the panel discussed what languages are, what it means to know things, and what meaning is. In this bonus episode, we extend that conversation to discuss how language affects the tech and software communities. We delve into things like whether Codes of Conduct are actually a good thing, how efforts to make language more inclusive can be harmful, and much more.

This content would usually be included as supporter only content, but we decided to release it to everyone! If you enjoy this kind of discussion (and the higher quality audio!), become a supporter today so you can get access to this extra content in each of our episodes! You can sign up by going to https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

• Changelog Zulip discussion about overflows
• Language Machines
• Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?
• Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?
• How language shapes the way we think -  Lera Boroditsky

Table of Contents:

• Chapter 8: Language and Psychological Safety (01:28)
• Epilogue (01:00:23)

Hosts

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• (01:28) - Chapter 8: Language and Psychological Safety

Whether you're talking to another person, talking to a computer, or just talking to yourself, we use languages every day. For a long time now, there's been a debate about whether natural languages and programming languages are distinct from each other. The creation of large language models and their ability to produce code from natural language has blurred these lines even further. In this episode, Kris is joined by Angelica, Matt, and guest co-host Steve Klabnik, to discuss language, what it means to know something, what it means to mean, and so much more.

This conversation went so long that we accidentally recorded an entire extra episode! That episode is available as a bonus release in our feed.

Supporters get even more conversation and higher quality audio! Get access by signing up at https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

• Changelog Zulip discussion about overflows
• Language Machines
• Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?
• Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together In The Cafeteria?
• How language shapes the way we think -  Lera Boroditsky

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (02:04)
• Chapter 1: Natural vs Programming (04:48)
• Chapter 2: What does it mean to know something? (20:15)
• Chapter 3: Language != Intelligence (37:32)
• Chapter 4: What if Kafka wrote America for the PowerPC? [Supporter Only] (43:43)
• Chapter 5: Spoken Language Is Different From Written Language [Supporter Only] (44:30)
• Chapter 6: Misinterpretation In Programming Language (47:44)
• Chapter 7: Is It Harder To Learn Natural or Programming Languages? [Supporter Only] (01:01:45)
• Epilogue (01:02:31)

Hosts

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• (02:04) - Prologue

Speed and software should go hand in hand, but with Moore's Law coming to an end and CPU clock speeds remaining steady over the last 20 years, software engineers need to turn to new techniques to improve the efficiency of their code. In this episode, Matt and Angelica and joined by Clement Jean to discuss one of these techniques: SIMD. They'll discuss what SIMD is, how it can be used from languages like Go, the various proposals to get better support for SIMD directly into Go and its compiler, and a bunch of other related topics.

Supporters get even more conversation and higher quality audio! Get access by signing up at https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

• ARM Neon
• SVE
• SSE
• AVX, AVX-256, AVX-512
• Parsing Gigabytes of JSON Per Second
• Proposal #67520
• Proposal #73787
• Compiler Explorer
• Designing Data Intensive Applications, Chapter 4

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (03:36)
• Chapter 1: What is SIMD? (04:56)
• Chapter 2: SIMD in Go (13:20)
• Chapter 3: When should one use SIMD? (18:43)
• Chapter 4: Clement's journey to SIMD [Supporter Only] (21:19)
• Chapter 5: SIMD Intrinsics in Go (21:32)
• Chapter 6: SIMD in other languages (35:47)
• Chapter 7: Measuring SIMD performance (43:00)
• Chapter 8: Data Oriented Design [Supporter Only] (52:52)
• Chapter 9: SIMD-JSON (52:59)
• Chapter 10: Protocol Buffers, gRPC, and cURL [Supporter Only] (58:11)
• Epilogue (01:01:50)

Hosts

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• (03:36) - Prologue

Building software is difficult and rarely can software engineers do it alone. In this episode, Kris is joined by Ian, Matthew, and Angelica to talk managing software projects and what three often used but rarely defined roles actually mean: project manager, product manager, and program manager. The panel also discusses how these roles interact with engineering managers, what they think these roles actually do, and whether product managers should actually exist.

For our supporters, this episode contains an extended discussion including a discussion on whether you should trust a new company you join, how to build trust, and what metrics we should measure for project success. Get access by signing up at https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (03:28)
• Chapter 1: Product? Project? Program? (05:18)
• Chapter 2: PMs and Software Engineers (13:56)
• Chapter 3: Splitting Roles (44:49)
• Chapter 4: Building Trust [Supporter Only] (53:34)
• Chapter 5: Metrics [Supporter Only] (54:13)
• Chapter 6: Should Product Managers Exist? (55:25)
• Appendix UNPOP: Unpopular Opinions (01:06:37)
• Epilogue (01:11:56)

Hosts

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• (03:28) - Prologue

Error handling in Go is one of the language's most controversial topics. It ranks high in each Go Developer Survey and many different people have proposed many different solutions to the perceived problems. The Go Team's stance on error handling as a problem in need of a fix has changed recently, with a declaration that no proposals will be accepted for changes to Go's error handling syntax. In this episode, Kris is joined by Ian and Matt to discuss this news. They talk about whether error handling has ever actually been a problem, what the Go team actually is, and the benefits of deciding not to provided syntactic support for error handling.

For our supporters, this episode contains an extended discussion. Get access by signing up at https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

• [ On | No ] syntactic support for error handling
• #71203 proposal: spec: reduce error handling boilerplate using ?
• #71460 discussion: spec: reduce error handling boilerplate using ?
• Go Wiki: SliceTricks
• slices package
• maps package
• skriptble's Bluesky post on AI hype
• #19623 proposal: spec: change int to be arbitrary precision

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (02:32)
• Chapter 1: It's Fine. (04:03)
• Chapter 2: But What Are Errors? (09:19)
• Chapter 3: Who's Responsible For Solving Problems? (26:53)
• Chapter 4: We Should Panic (38:24)
• Chapter 5: Go Is A Low Level Language (41:32) [Supporter Only]
• Chapter 6: What Is The Go Team? (41:56)
• Chapter 7: What's Next for Go? (50:41)
• Chapter 8: Boundaries & Backpressure (59:08)
• Appendix UNPOP: Unpopular Proposals (59:39) [Supporter Only]
• Appendix WASM: The New FFI (59:43)
• Epilogue (01:05:36)

Hosts

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• (02:32) - Prologue

AI is a divisive topic. Some people are AI boosters while others are AI doomers. And then there are those of us who sit in the middle, feeling both sides are not just wrong but that they aren't experiencing a shared reality with the rest of us. In this episode, Kris and Matt are joined by Steve Klabnik to talk about the state of AI and the discourse around it.

For our supporters, this episode contains extra chapters of discussion. Get access by signing up at https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

• Carl Sagan Responds To Christian Grad Student Question About God
• Weapons of Math Destruction
• Google apologises for Photos app's racist blunder
• My AI Skeptic Friends Are All Nuts
• Playing to Win
• The Infinite Game
• Glenn Vanderburg of LivingSocial on why software development is an engineering discipline
• Analogs All The Way Down

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (01:35)
• Chapter 1: Chemistry Is Just Alchemy Rebranded (07:30)
• Chapter 2: Quantity Is A Quality All On Its Own (15:57)
• Chapter 3: Optimizing The Individual, Not The Collective (25:39)
• Chapter 4: What Is Fun? (30:09)
• Chapter 5: Balancing The Good And The Bad [Supporter Only] (38:18)
• Chapter 6: The Art of Constructive Criticism [Supporter Only] (38:28)
• Chapter 7: Embracing The Meta (38:44)
• Chapter 8: What's Popular Is Popular Because It's Popular (44:56)
• Chapter 9: What Is A Computer? (51:29)
• Chapter 10: What's Popular Is Popular Because It's Popular Part II (01:09:24)
• Epilogue (01:14:09)

Hosts

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• (01:35) - Prologue

We all use open source software on a daily basis. Even though the software is free to consume doesn't mean it's free to produce. Over the years, there have been many attempts to support open source development financially, from companies that sell support to foundations and many things in between. On this week's episode, Angelica and Matt are joined by Filippo Valsorda and Daniel McCarney to discuss Geomys, an open source maintenance company. The goal of Geomys is to provide open source maintainers with stable income to support themselves financially while doing the very important work of keeping open source projects well maintained. The group discusses the why and how of Geomys, what the day to day is like, and open source maintenance as a whole.

For our supporters, this episode contains extra chapters of discussion. Get access by signing up at https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes:

• Geomys

Table of Contents:

• Prologue (01:11)
• Chapter 1: Geomys, An Open Source Maintainership Company (04:27)
• Chapter 2: Day To Day At Geomys [Supporter Only] (12:29)
• Chapter 3: How Are Things Going? (12:29)
• Chapter 4: The Geomys Team [Supporter Only] (19:34)
• Chapter 5: Expansion Possibilities (19:34)
• Chapter 6: Interacting With The Community (30:42)
• Chapter 7: Building A Geomys Of Your Own [Supporter Only] (40:09)
• Chapter 8: Preventing Burnout (40:09)
• Chapter 9: Prioritizing Work (52:18)
• Appendix UNPOP: Unpopular Opinions (58:06)

Hosts

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram

• (01:11) - Prologue