Leor Zolman, creator of the BDS (Brain Damage Software) C compiler for CP/M ... the first commercial C compiler for microcomputers ... joins the show.  We discuss his compiler, tech writing, the genesis of The C Users Journal, his book Illustrated C, his path to teaching, and his journey in dealing with autism and trauma.

Leor's presentation at VCF East (2025) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4vrBd2FVCY 

Leor's Website https://www.bdsoft.com 

June 25, 2025 ( recorded on February 13th, 2024)

This episode is a reissue of an earlier audio-only episode with added video.

Christine Seeman joins the show to discuss a variety of programming languages including Java, Ruby, and Go. We also discuss her live international speaking events.

Website https://christine-seeman.com/ 

Mastodon: @[email protected] 

NDC London 2020 - 2FA Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTtZQVSnz2M 

.Net Rocks Podcast (taped at NDC London) https://www.dotnetrocks.com/details/1676 

One Does Not Simply Add MFA - YOW! 2022 https://youtu.be/adQZ6r3Y858?si=0IA5XIBzU0U8HOgj 

May 16, 2025

Mike Taylor, author of the VIC-20 text adventures Magic Mirror and Nosferatu as well as the Commodore 64 game The Causes of Chaos joins the show.  We talk about those early adventure games, his evolution as a software developer, Perl, paleontology, and his book about the 11th incarnation of Doctor Who.

Mike's contact information on Mastodon: @[email protected] https://sauropods.win/@mike/  

Mike's website: https://www.miketaylor.org.uk/  

Mile's text adventure games: https://www.miketaylor.org.uk/tech/advent/mm/  

Mike's paleontology blo Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week: https://svpow.com/ 

Mike's Reinvigorated Programmer blog in which he discusses everything except sauropod vertebrae: https://reprog.wordpress.com/ 

Rob Sherman joins the show to discuss his early years of BBSing in the 1980's and his current telnet bulletin-board systems running on Atari 8-bit gear.

Rob's telnet BBS's are as follows:

Southernamis.ddns.net:23  This BBS runs in the AWS cloud 24/7 on Atari 130XE, 850 interfaces at a lightning speed of 9600 baud. 

Amis86.ddns.net:9000  This BBS is a complete rebuild of MACE 1986 AMIS BBS. Enhanced and highly modified

Nitelite.ddns.net:9000  This BBS is the restoration of the Atari Corporate 8Bit BBS Nitelite ... an amazing part of Atari History.

Here's the terminal, SyncTerm, used in the show: https://syncterm.bbsdev.net/ 

Gunnar Gustafson rejoins the show to discuss audio synthesis in musical gear.  He discusses family ties to some very early audio gear and he draws parallels to the evolution of musical synthesizers and the evolution of software development.

This is a video-added re-release of my interview with Rob Swindell. Rob is the author and sysop of the MS-DOS and telnet versions of the Synchronet BBS.  He joined the show to discuss the genesis of the BBS, running his own BBS company, and the journey to an open source Internet version of Synchronet.

Rob's main site with links to source code repo's and his YouTube channel: http://synchro.net 

The Synchronet wiki: http://wiki.synchro.net 

The home page for SyncTerm, the preferred client for telnet BBS's: http://syncterm.net 

The Synchronet IRC server: irc.synchro.net

Rob's uncut interview with Jason Scott for the BBS Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvMFKU04YTk 

This is a re-release (with video!) of my interview with software engineer, writer, and publishing entrepreneur Jeff Duntemann. Jeff was the first editor of Borland's In-House Magazine "Turbo Technix" which was supplied to purchasers of early editions of Turbo Pascal, Turbo C, and similar Borland products. He was the Structured Programming columnist for Dr. Dobbs Journal for a number of years.

Jeff's Free FreePascal and Lazarus e-book http://www.copperwood.com/pub/FreePascalFromSquareOne.pdf 

Jeff's Blog https://www.contrapositivediary.com/ 

The Latest Edition of X64 Assembly Language Step by Step https://www.amazon.com/x64-Assembly-Language-Step-Step/dp/1394155247 

Bruce Hoyt and his son Ben Hoyt discuss 70's-era home computing including the MOS KIM-1, The Ohio Scientific Superboard II, and the Ferguson Big Board CP/M machine, BASIC, assembly language, and Forth.  Bruce's Pentominos solution has been used to test and benchmark Forth systems.  

The GForth version is available at the link below:

https://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/forth/pentomino.fs 

Podcast Email:   [email protected] 

Podcast Website: https://www.straypointers.com 

Writer/illustrator Rick Lundeen rejoins the show to discuss his comic book series "The Bombardier" and his graphic novel adaptation of the classic Doctor Who story "The Daleks' Master Plan"

Rick's Ko-Fi page is here: https://ko-fi.com/ricklundeen/gallery 

The Bombardier four-issue series can be ordered here: https://www.indyplanet.com/the-bombardier-1 

With video! Software engineers Juan Vazquez and Cameron Cunning rejoin the show to discuss the 2024 Advent of Code, an annual programming competition.

Website for the Advent of Code competition: https://adventofcode.com/  

Cameron's Github Repo for AoC 2024: https://github.com/ccunning2/AoC2024  

Jim's Github Repo for AoC 2024: https://github.com/jimlawless/aoc2024