Fredrik chats with Chris Ferdinandi about vanilla Javascript, the pros and cons of libraries, the state of web components, and a lot more.

Chris tells us about how and why he became the vanilla Javascript guy, and why he dislikes vanilla-js.com. We talk about why we as web developers pick up so many libraries, and why we often seem to use really large tools on really small problems. We wonder if different types of developers should think in different ways about libraries. Chris also talks about how different groups attending his courses approach the subject of vanilla Javascript in different ways, and of course a bit about where he hopes and thinks web development might be heading in the next few years.

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Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at [email protected] if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.

Fredrik chats with Niels Østergaard about working with AR and VR. How is the experience is different and how can you think differently about VR and AR? VR can take you to a completely different place, but you still have to worry about the physical world around you breaking the immersion (or your TV).

We discuss “the M-word” - metaverse - what and who is it for? Niels explains how it might actually be useful in some circumstances!

What’s exciting right now in AR? Remember how AR is already here in a lot of ways - including in most people’s phones. Who makes the most exciting devices right now, who makes intersting AR experiences, and will Apple’s possible headsets make any difference?

What’s missing right now? Niels thinks more of common formats would be useful - to make it easier to move content between experiences. Niels also predicts AI-supported generation of content will be a big thing.

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Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at [email protected] if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.

This episode is sponsored by Snyk. Fredrik talks to Snyk founder and president Guy Podjarny about building security tools for developers, tools which you will actually use and enjoy.

Guy talks about how Snyk was built to bring developer focus into security, building with a great focus on the user instead of on the person paying the bills for tools or looking at the reports. The world may not stop revolving around developers - meaning we need to cover wider and wider areas of knowledge - but we need to accept the responsibility of this, and use good tools to enable us to build better things more easily and take on all that responsibility in a good way.

Guy describes Snyk’s suite of tools and how they are built to be maximally useful and convenient to developers. Security problems and their fixes can be as easy as fixing a spelling mistake if built right! Snyk’s tools can look at the whole application and understand the context. They can look at node_modules and filter out the problems which actually do not affect your app, and suggest appropriate fixes for the problems which do.

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Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at [email protected] if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.

Fredrik chats with Tommy Maloteaux about his VR god game Deisim and all the interesting stuff which has happened in and around the game since episode 406 where Tommy first was a guest on the podcast.

We start with some background on Tommy and how he got into game development from a start as a web developer. Then Tommy tells us how he got started creating the game. Tommy likes to start small and iterate, and he chose to start with the AI. We also discuss how the word AI can sound a lot more intimidating than when you actually need to build for your game.

Deisim is available on multiple platforms, and since we last spoke it has become available through Oculus App lab, and thus much easier to play on Oculus quest. Tommy tells us about how App lab works, and how it has changed things for Deisim (and saved Oculus a lot of developer accounts).

The other major event for Deisim since last time is that the game sells enough that it has allowed Tommy to make the game his full time job. Tommy talks about how going full time has changed how he works on the game, like both having more time, and also given him a chance to find a nice work-life balance. Also: how temperature can affect what gets worked on for the game.

We discuss what hardware Tommy uses to develop the game, and interesting differences between running on desktop versus mobile hardware. On the Quest, the game is GPU bound, on the PC it’s CPU bound.

A 2D mode for the game is in development, and Tommy talks about that version and what changes he needed to make to get the game running in 2D on a PC with a mouse. A well-factored code base and build pipeline helped a lot.

Last but not least, Tommy discusses the power of having core values for your project, which the core values for Deisim are, and letting them guide what gets put in or not.

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Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at [email protected] if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.

Kristoffer chats with Harald Achitz about test-driven development, Djinni, meetups, and the standardization of C++.

How does Harald do TDD? His focus on code coverage plays a role too. Clouds make it easier to skip tests, because everything becomes part of a big puzzle which only lives in production? Building habits are the big thing, not which actual tools you use and whether they can be used everywhere.

Then, we discuss Djinni - a interface definition language and code generator for integrating C++ into applications written in other languages.

The discussion then moves on to the C++ meetups Harald arranges, another aspect of solving the difficult social side of programming by networking and sharing information. Harald also puts the presentations on Youtube and is fascinated by how accessible the tools are nowadays for recording, producing and publishing video these days. The C++ meetup paused during the pandemic, and we discuss the pros and cons of moving to online meetups.

Finally, we discuss the standardization process of C++, and the possibility of forming a local C++ body for Sweden to be involved in the standardization process. We should be interested in getting involved in the standard, both as developers, companies, and industries. Get in touch with Harald if you have ideas and want to help things happen!

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Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at [email protected] if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.

Kristoffer chats with Harald Achitz about Harald’s path as a developer, test-driven development, seeing the big picture, and more.

The first part of the discussion is Harald’s background: Growing up on the far side of Europe, focusing on music, and how he eventually landed in computing. Freelancing as a developer in 1995 - what was that like? How did one find customers? The story then goes into Harald’s way into C and C++. Developing for medical devices and hospitals. Moving toward Linux, making a living as an open source developer, and eventually ending up in Sweden.

Then, the conversation moves to Harald’s increasing interest in what happens after you finish writing the code; builds, releases, integrations, package managers, build systems, and so much more. We talk quite a bit about seeing the big picture, and how our code is, at best, a temporary and unimportant part of the greater whole. Are we too focused on the next task, at the expense of thinking about and seeing the whole?

Harald explains why he likes to have 100% code coverage, how he goes about setting up his tests, and the challenges of setting up tests when responsibilities strech across teams.

Many of the hardest problems are organizational, the code we write is, on the whole, often not very important. Code is temporary. All of which is more motivation for testing more.

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Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at [email protected] if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.

Fredrik chats with Wilson Snyder about Verilator, chip design, performance, and open hardware.

This episode is a bit of a follow-up to episode 389 where Robert Wikander talked - in Swedish - about verification of circuit designs. Afterward, Robert mentioned that we should really ask Wilson Snyder to talk about Verilator, and here we are! Wilson works with CPU and other hardware design, and is one of the lead developers of Verilator. When you design hardware, hardware description languages come in handy - you use them to describe hardware precisely. Then you can generate runnable code simulating the hardware, and run batteries of tests against it without needing to manufacture physical hardware.

Verilator is one tool for turning code in the Verilog hardware description language into C++ or Systemc. The major competing tools are more on the interpreter side - which means that Verilator usually has a performance advantage. Oh, and it’s GPL licensed as well. As we discuss, Verilator doesn’t actually support all of Verilog, but that’s being worked on. And increased performance in itself is a clear goal of both research and concrete improvements.

We also discuss a bit what might come out hardware-wise in the future. Wilson predicts DPUs - data-offload units, basically - will become even more of a thing than today.

The second part of the discussion is focused on Verilator itself - how it’s built, designed, and developed. People with knowledge of compilers will feel right at home inside the Verilator source code.

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Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at [email protected] if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.

Fredrik chats with Tommy Maloteaux, developer of VR god game Deisim. Tommy tells us where the inspiration came from, how he started developing the game, the tools he’s used, and more. Deisim has been developed most of the time as an early access game with a active community of players contributing heavily to the process.

Also discussed are the problems of 2016, and the advantage of not knowing too much when starting.

Since we recorded, Oculus has released App lab - a feature which makes it possible to buy and try Deisim and many other games right inside the Quest headset, without the need of sideloading or other complicating processes. The VR future is full of exciting things!

Thank you Cloudnet for sponsoring our VPS!

Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at [email protected] if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.

Fredrik chats with Dave Jones of Podcast index - a new open podcast directory and API, and also one of the drivers of a new podcasting namespace for RSS.

Podcasting as infrastructure has not advanced much at all in a long time. Dave, Adam and Podcast index wants to preserve podcasting as free and distributed, and also advance what the ecosystem can be - such as providing value.

The namespace contains down-to-earth things such as chapters and location tags, but also much more ambitious ideas. Part of the vision is to reimagine podcasting as a platform of value where listeners can more easily and naturally support not only podcasters, but also app developers and anyone else who might be involved. This is where the value tag and cryptocurrencies enter the picture.

We also discuss programming languages a bit - what it takes to entice you to really get into a programming language. Perhaps the specific languages we use are no longer as critical as they used to be?

How hard is it to set up your own podcast directory? Not that hard, says David, but keeping it within a sane budget can take some balancing. And if everyone supported Websub things wouldn’t be nearly as tricky.

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Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at [email protected] if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.

Fredrik chats with Sara Vieira about The Opinionated Guide to React - the guide to making all the choices React doesn’t make for you (plus hooks). We talk about the magic train ride from Prague which led to the creation of the book, what the writing and publication process was like, and of course about the surprising and horrific code Sara uses to create the final book files. We also discuss MC:ing conferences, what happens when world events explode all over your writing, finding your voice, and making the most of your Grammarly plan.

Thank you Cloudnet for sponsoring our VPS!

Comments, questions or tips? We are @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at [email protected] if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive.

If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi.