Programming Throwdown

00:00:24 Introduction
00:02:19 Edo's Background
00:08:20 What are Embeddings?
00:14:00 Self-Organizing Maps & how humans store data
00:22:27 The lifecycle of a machine learning system
00:34:40 The weirdness of high-dimensional spaces

00:42:20 How to manage a vector database

00:47:01 Pinecone the company

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The Art of Vacations

Taking a good vacation is as important as getting a good night's sleep (*very important*).  It may sound silly on its face, but planning a vacation and planning around your vacation is extremely important to ensure that you are in the right headspace the rest of the year.  This is especially true in the COVID era where many of us are working from home.  In this episode, we dive into why vacations are so important, how to plan a relaxing vacation, and how to make sure that your team is supported while you are out.

Intro topic: 
Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit and Blue Origin

News/Links:

• TextStyleBrush: Transfer of Text Aesthetics from a Single Example
  • https://deepai.org/publication/textstylebrush-transfer-of-text-aesthetics-from-a-single-example
• Berkshire Hathaway Stock Price integer overflow
  • https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/07/bug_warren_buffett_rollover_nasdaq/
• LineageOS
  • https://lineageos.org/
• Crafting Interpreters is now an actual book
  • https://craftinginterpreters.com/

Book of the Show

• Jason: How to lead in product management
  • https://amzn.to/2UcPzPK
• Patrick: Holy Sister (Book of the Ancestor #3) by Mark Lawrence
  • https://amzn.to/3fVZscn

Audible Plug http://www.audibletrial.com/programmingthrowdown

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Jason: 7 Billion Humans
• Patrick: Moss (Oculus VR, PC VR, PS VR)

Topic: Vacations

• Why
  • 7 types of rest https://ideas.ted.com/the-7-types-of-rest-that-every-person-needs/
  • Gives you energy for the next crunch
  • Stepping back provides perspective
  • Preparing the team for unexpected absences
• Why not
  • Can lose context
  • Missed opportunities
  • Slipped deadlines
• How to set up the perfect vacation
  • Handing off responsibility
  • Documenting code
  • Decide how much to work on vacation
• How to be on vacation
  • Pre-cation
  • Handling crises / unexpected events
  • Post-cation
• How to come back from vacation
  • Create email filters / smart folders
  • Skim new pull requests / scrum documents
  • Review chat logs 
• Types of vacations
  • 1-3 days: delay results
  • 1-2 weeks: Deputize
  • 3+ weeks: Replace

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you can listen to more on Programming Throwdown’s website: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/

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You’ve seen the dancing Boston Dynamics dogs, Honda’s ASIMO greeting people at malls, and the half-court-shooting robot at the Olympics, among other awe-inspiring robot stories that nowadays are getting increasingly more common. But equally fascinating, especially for us programmers, is the amount of programming and structure needed to make sure these robots work as intended. In this episode, we talk with Abhay Venkatesh, Software Engineer at Anduril Industries, about Platforms for Robotics (PFRs), and the intricacies happening inside these mechanical wonders.

This episode touches on the following key topics and ideas:

00:00:24 Introduction

00:01:10 Introducing Abhay Venkatesh

00:03:00 What robotics is as a field or practice

00:07:18 Platform for Robotics (PFRs)

00:10:07 OODA loop

00:12:27 What makes up a Platform for Robotics?

00:14:17 Raspberry Pi 

00:15:30 Nvidia Tegra

00:17:17 Edge computing

00:19:29 Telemetry

00:22:06 Ad: SignalWire, a next-gen video collaboration platform

00:23:30 Real-time constraints and safety challenges

00:28:31 Formal verification and defensive programming

00:32:28 Operating systems in robotics

00:34:27 Nix and reproducible hermetic builds

00:37:52 Key aspects in robotics software development

00:41:14 Deployment

00:46:24 Simulation

00:48:51 Google testing pyramid 

00:52:01 Actuators

00:55:27 Future of PFRs

01:02:49 Farewells

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Companies

• Anduril Industries https://www.anduril.com/
• Nvidia https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/
• Boston Dynamics https://www.bostondynamics.com/

Tools

• Arduino https://www.arduino.cc/
• Raspberry Pi https://www.raspberrypi.org/
• Nvidia Tegra https://developer.nvidia.com/tegra-development
• NixOS https://nixos.org/
• Docker https://www.docker.com/
• Bazel https://bazel.build/

Our sponsor for this episode is SignalWire

https://signalwire.com/

Use code THROWDOWN for $25 in developer credit

Abhay’s website: https://abhayvenkatesh.com/

Abhay on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AbhayVenkatesh1

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you can listen to more on Programming Throwdown’s website: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/

Reach out to us via email: [email protected]

You can also follow Programming Throwdown on 

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Join the discussion on our Discord

Help support Programming Throwdown through our Patreon

Brief Summary:

Authentication has become a necessity in a digital world that’s ever-increasing in complexity. What can you do to arm yourself against the constant threat of data breaches and hacks? In this episode Jason sits down with Aviad Mizrachi, CTO and Co-Founder of Frontegg, to give us valuable insight into how Authentication works, and how these help you become more defensible against attacks.

This episode touches on the following key topics and ideas:

00:00:24 Introduction

00:01:10 Introducing Aviad Mizrachi

00:04:36 The login

00:06:32 The many intricacies of Authentication

00:10:25 How are passwords sent to servers?

00:11:26 Query param

00:16:59 Multi-factor authorization (MFA)

00:20:11 Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP)

00:28:05 Single Sign-on (SSO) Cross-site scripting

00:33:38 Ad: SignalWire, a next-gen video collaboration platform

00:35:03 Session tokens

00:36:36 Cross-site scripting (XSS)

00:39:24 JSON web tokens (JWTs)

00:41:24 Difference between session token and refresh token

00:49:33 More about Frontegg, Aviad’s company

00:54:14 SQL injection attack

00:56:11 Auditing and audit logs

00:59:42 Authentication in mobile apps

01:00:50 Frontegg hiring and intern opportunities

01:05:22 Frontegg product offerings

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tools

• Frontegg https://frontegg.com/
• TypeScript https://www.typescriptlang.org/
• Angular https://angular.io/guide/architecture
• Microsoft Identity and Access Management https://www.microsoft.com/en-ww/security/business/identity-access-management
• Google Identity https://developers.google.com/identity
• Okta https://www.okta.com/

Articles:

• How Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's Account Was Hacked https://www.wired.com/story/jack-dorsey-twitter-hacked/

Our sponsor for this episode is SignalWire

https://signalwire.com/

You can reach Aviad on:

LinkedIn | GitHub

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you can listen to more on Programming Throwdown’s website: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/

Reach out to us via email: [email protected]

You can also follow Programming Throwdown on 

Facebook | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Player.FM 

Join the discussion on our Discord

You can also help support Programming Throwdown through our Patreon

In this duo episode, Jason and Patrick introduce us to the world of hash maps, from buckets and hash functions, to differences between open and closed addressing, to minimal perfect hashes and locality sensitive hashing. A familiarity with hash maps is an oft-overlooked but highly sought-after skill, and it can be a valuable asset for those eyeing a career in programming.

Along with the main topic, Jason and Patrick also talk about some of their latest interests: books, gadgets, tools and games.

This episode touches on the following key topics and ideas:

00:01:27 Playing games with Oculus Quest: Acron, Racket: Nx, Gorn, Superhot 

00:11:05 News: “I Made a Water Computer” by Steve Mould

00:14:56 colinfurze

00:15:52 News: Comprehensive guide to Attention Mechanisms

00:21:53 News: Starship SN15

00:25:18 News: MailSync now Open source (GPL)

00:28:34 Jason’s Book of the Show: Elon Musk

00:32:04 Patrick’s Book of the Show: Ready Player Two

00:33:40 Jason’s Tool of the Show: Datadog

00:38:44 Patrick’s Tool of the Show: I Expect You to Die

00:40:30 Escape rooms

00:45:39 Sudoku

00:48:35 Hash maps: the promise and idea

00:50:59 Hash Functions

00:52:34 Examples of hash functions: Cryptographically Secure and Non-Crypto

01:01:05 Load Factors

01:03:43 Open vs Closed Addressing

01:15:10 Minimal Perfect Hash

01:16:25 salts

01:19:00 Locality Sensitive Hashing

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tools

• Mailsync http://mailsync.sourceforge.net/
• Mailspring https://getmailspring.com/
• Datadog https://www.datadoghq.com/
• SHA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Hash_Algorithms
• MD5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD5
• MurmurHash https://github.com/aappleby/smhashera
• xxHash https://cyan4973.github.io/xxHash/
• MapReduce https://www.ibm.com/analytics/hadoop/mapreduce

Books

• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance 
• Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

Gadgets

• Oculus Quest 2 https://www.oculus.com/quest-2/
• Oculus Link https://www.oculus.com/accessories/oculus-link/

Games

• Acron: Attack of the Squirrels! https://www.resolutiongames.com/acron
• Racket: Nx https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/2255408847836468
• Gorn https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3349689215139117
• Superhot https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/1921533091289407
• I Expect You to Die https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/1987283631365460
• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the WIld https://www.zelda.com/breath-of-the-wild/

Videos:

• I Made A Water Computer And It Actually Works https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxXaizglscw
• colinfurze YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/colinfurze

Articles:

• Comprehensive guide to Attention Mechanisms https://www.analyticsvidhya.com/blog/2019/11/comprehensive-guide-attention-mechanism-deep-learning/
• Starship SN15 https://www.space.com/spacex-starship-sn15-launch-landing-success
• MailSync is now Open Source (GPL) https://community.getmailspring.com/t/a-free-open-source-future-for-mailspring/484

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you can listen to more on Programming Throwdown’s website: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/

Reach out to us via email: [email protected]

You can also follow Programming Throwdown on 

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Join the discussion on our Discord

You can also help support Programming Throwdown through our Patreon

Ever wondered how route planning apps, well, plan routes? In this episode, we navigate through this fascinating topic, a field as data-driven and systemic as it is magical and compelling. 

Joining us is Parker Woodward, Route Expert and Marketing Director for Route4Me. We discuss how route planning works, the intricacies behind it, and how services like Route4Me perform complex balancing acts between machine learning and user-generated feedback.

This episode touches on the following key topics and ideas:

00:00:23 Introducing Parker

00:01:54 Becoming a Route Expert

00:04:22 Getting started through smaller startups

00:12:41 Leveraging technology for the greater good

00:14:36 The magic of route planning

00:23:30 Homomorphism and satisfiability

00:31:18 Geocoding

00:33:06 User-generated feedback

00:37:08 Importance of statistics knowledge

00:39:34 The degree of automation in route planning

00:42:54 Inverse decision-making

00:48:47 Operations Research

00:53:42 Dwarf Fortress

00:56:40 US vs European routes

00:57:51 What Route4Me does

01:05:38 Working at Route4Me

01:10:26 Route4Me API

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tools

• Route4Me https://route4me.com
• Route4Me API https://route4me.io
• Waze https://www.waze.com
• Google Maps https://www.google.com/maps
• OpenStreetMap https://www.openstreetmap.org
• MapQuest https://www.mapquest.com
• DeepMind https://deepmind.com

Books

• Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

Games

• Dwarf Fortress http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Links

• Waymo https://waymo.com/
• Upwork https://www.upwork.com/

Reach out to Parker via email: [email protected]

Catch Parker on LinkedIn

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you can listen to more on Programming Throwdown’s website: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/

Reach out to us via email: [email protected]

You can also follow Programming Throwdown on 

Facebook | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Player.FM 

Join the discussion on our Discord

You can also help support Programming Throwdown through our Patreon

What makes for good documentation? In this episode, we dive into one of the most important yet overlooked facets of coding. With us are Omer Rosenbaum and Tim Post of Swimm.io. Swimm is an app that allows you to create docs coupled with your code, which are auto-synced and integrated into your workflow. It makes for much more efficient, elegant, and accessible documentation. 

Omer is the CTO of Swimm, and Tim is Principal Development Relations and User Advocate. They are the experts who will guide us through good code documentation practices and tools, as well as share some fascinating real-life examples and stories.

This episode touches on the following key topics and ideas:

00:01:20 Introducing Omer and Tim

00:03:28 Omer: learning tech while in the military

00:06:36 Israel Tech Challenge

00:08:32 Impostor Syndrome

00:12:15 Tim: the consulting career route

00:18:15 Stack Overflow elected moderator

00:20:59 ZFS and Btrfs 

00:22:49 What is good code documentation?

00:34:48 Documentation and remote work

00:36:99 Good practices

00:40:37 Code comments

00:45:20 How to write documentation

00:46:59 Signs of bad code documentation

00:48:05 Swimm overview

00:53:21 PyTorch documentation

00:54:45 PHP documentation

00:56:34 Swimm’s CLI tools

01:01:16 Code documentation horror stories

01:07:26 Swimm offers for open-source projects and enterprises

01:13:47 Working at Swimm

01:19:54 The value of remote work

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tools

• Swimm https://swimm.io/
• ReiserFS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReiserFS
• PyTorch https://pytorch.org/docs/stable/index.html
• Electron https://www.electronjs.org/
• Git https://git-scm.com/
• Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com/

Catch Swimm on:

Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, you can listen to more programming news and updates like this one on Programming Throwdown’s website: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/, or send us an email at [email protected].

You can also follow Programming Throwdown on 

Facebook | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Player.FM 

You can also help support Programming Throwdown through our Patreon.

In this episode, we’re excited to have Meredydd Luff, the founder of Anvil. Anvil is a powerful tool that allows you to build full stack web apps with just Python. Without the need to be fluent in Javascript or other languages, Anvil is easy enough for beginners, but robust enough for professional work. We talk to Meredydd about Anvil and its features, as well as delve into the importance of making programming more accessible to more people.

This episode touches on the following key topics and ideas:

00:00:17 Jason introduces Meredydd and Anvil 
00:01:06 What is Anvil?
00:09:27 Web hydration
00:11:00 Jupyter Notebook
00:12:49 The Uplink
00:14:02 GraphQL
00:23:06 How Anvil works
00:24:19 Skulpt
00:28:09 Brython
00:29:04 Pyodide
00:32:46 Javascript daisy chaining
00:37:11 GRPC and protocol buffers 
00:39:03 “Anvil is an abstraction.”
00:40:09 Escape hatches
00:43:10 Anvil and Webpack
00:44:35 “Learn Python and build a website.”
00:45:02 Accessibility
00:47:16 Meredydd’s personal background, and Anvil’s beginnings
00:52:56 Putting your work out there
00:56:01 Logging and capturing what people want
01:01:06 Ad: ConfigCat
01:03:04 Anvil’s parent company, The Tuesday Project Ltd. 
01:05:22 Meredydd’s take on venture capitalism on developer tools
01:08:42 Working in Anvil
01:17:02 Contact details for Meredydd and Anvil

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Tools
Anvil https://anvil.works/
Python https://www.python.org/
Jupyter Notebook https://jupyter.org/
GraphQL https://graphql.org/
Skulpt https://skulpt.org/
Brython https://brython.info/
Transcrypt https://www.transcrypt.org/
Pyodide https://pyodide.org/en/stable/

Videos
Meredydd’s Lightning Talk in PyCon 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHUw3N15v38
Turning a Jupyter Notebook into a Web App with Anvil https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh0B4HjQxOU

Podcast
Stories from the Workshop, Anvil’s podcast https://anvil.works/podcast

Catch Meredydd on Twitter @meredydd

Anvil’s features are offered completely free for teachers and educators. Send Meredydd an inquiry through email at [email protected].

Get ConfigCat: https://configcat.com/
Get Audible: http://www.audibletrial.com/programmingthrowdown

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, you can listen to more programming news and updates like this one on Programming Throwdown’s website: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/episodes/113-full-stack-web-apps-using or send us an email at [email protected].

You can also follow Programming Throwdown on 
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You can also help support Programming Throwdown through our Patreon.

In another duo episode, Jason and Patrick give an in-depth introduction to trees, their many types, approaches and functions, and their importance in modern programming. Also, peppered throughout the episode are the games, books, tools, and ideas that have currently piqued their interest.

This episode touches on the following key topics and ideas:

00:00:17 Avoiding drama at work

00:07:10 News: C++20 (7:10)

00:09:37 News: Play Co-op Diablo II in the browser

00:12:58 Wreckfest

00:15:07 Kaboom

00:17:45 The future of remote work

00:24:46 Jason’s Book of the Show: Debt: The First 5000 Years

00:27:08 fractional-reserve banking

00:31:30 DeFi, distributed finance

00:33:08 Patrick’s Book of the Show: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, the Illustrated Edition

00:35:49 (Ad) Audible

00:37:05 Jason’s Tool of the Show: Vagrant

00:41:04 Patrick’s Tool of the Show: Zach Gage Games

00:45:03 (Ad) ConfigCat

00:46:03 feature flags

00:47:03 Trees: why are they important? 

00:49:43 The divide and conquer approach

00:51:34 The agglometric approach

00:55:57 Choosing the right tree and algorithm

00:57:56 Keeping trees balanced

01:01:10 binary trees

01:02:52 binary trees and machine learning

01:05:28 b-trees

01:10:04 spatial trees: the k-d tree

01:16:50 k-d trees and multidimension

01:18:42 quadtrees and octrees

01:21:44 r-trees

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Books

• Debt: The First 5000 Years, by David Graeber https://amzn.to/3uKEoe9
• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The Illustrated Edition, by JK Rowling https://amzn.to/2R6ILSs

Games

• Diablo II browser game http://clouddiablo.com/
• Wreckfest https://www.thqnordic.com/games/wreckfest
• Zach Gage Games http://stfj.net/

Tools

• Vagrant https://www.vagrantup.com/
• Kaboom https://replit.com/kaboom

Articles

• Article on C++20: https://oleksandrkvl.github.io/2021/04/02/cpp-20-overview.html
• The debate over remote work: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56771539

Get ConfigCat: https://configcat.com/

Get Audible: http://www.audibletrial.com/programmingthrowdown

If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, you can listen to more programming news and updates like this one on Programming Throwdown’s website: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/

You can also follow Programming Throwdown on 

Facebook | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Player.FM 

You can also help support Programming Throwdown through our Patreon.

In this episode, we talk with Frank McSherry, Gödel Prize-winning data scientist, and Co-founder and Chief Scientist at Materialize, Inc. Frank shares expert viewpoints drawn from his years as an academic, as well as personal insights on helping run a company at the cutting edge of real-time data streaming.

Show Notes: https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/episodes/111-real-time-data-streaming