Programming Throwdown

Programming Throwdown

Continuous Integration

Nov 13 • 113 min

Most developers that I know use CircleCI every single day. It’s both an honor and an amazing experience to learn about continuous integration and continuous deployment from Rob Zuber, CTO of CircleCI. We also cover a range of topics from staying motivated…

WebRTC

Oct 24 • 77 min

Everyone has used programs that talk to a server: Uber, podcast apps, etc.. Most people also know about peer-to-peer applications such as bittorrent, but did you know that video chat programs such as Skype and Google Hangouts are also peer-to-peer? You…

Search at Etsy

Oct 7 • 78 min

What actually happens when you type something in the search bar at the top of etsy.com and hit enter? This awesome interview with Liangjie Hong, Director of Data Science and Machine Learning, answers that question all the way from the philosophical (what…

A Journey to Programming Mastery

Sep 19 • 71 min

Every interview we do is such an exciting and unique experience. Patrick and I had great pleasure in hosting Andy and Dave, authors of “The Pragmatic Programmer”. We pick their brains on a variety of topics including rapid prototyping, the 10x engineer,…

Basics of UI Design for Engineers

Jul 13 • 66 min

Surprise! Weekend episode :-D Every piece of code you write is either going to be for computer-to-computer interaction, or for human-machine interaction. For the latter, how do you make your interface easy to understand and use? Erik Kennedy, independent…

Functional Programming

Jun 19 • 66 min

Hey all! Since episode 82, we received a ton of email asking for more info on functional programming (FP). To cover FP in great detail we are thrilled to chat with Adam Bell. Adam is the host of the Corecursive podcast and an engineer with many years of…

Terminal and Shells

May 21 • 75 min

Hey all!! Ask and ye shall receive! Someone in the Programming Throwdown discord suggested that we cover terminals and shells, so here we are! Despite sounding simple on the surface, there’s decades of complexity around terminal emulators and system…

From Combat to Code

Apr 30 • 97 min

Hey all!! Today we are sitting down with Jerome Hardaway. Jerome is an Air Force Veteran and the founder of Vets Who Code: a non-profit dedicated to training Veterans in web development and connecting Veterans to hiring managers around the World. Whether…

Image Processing

Apr 1 • 75 min

If you use ASCII encoding, the entire Oxford dictionary is about 5 million bytes. A single 4K image contains 25 million bytes. If you watch a 4K video running at 60 frames-per-second, over 300 dictionaries worth of data are going through your tv every…

Typescript

Mar 4 • 69 min

While the web is one of the easiest platforms for deploying software, it can also be one of the trickiest to debug. People have many different browsers, and some have plugins or settings that restrict functionality. It may be extremely difficult to…

Wolfram Language and Mathematica

Jan 15 • 137 min

Happy New Year! Today we are sitting down with Stephen Wolfram, inventor of Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha, and Wolfram Language! In this super interesting episode, Stephen talks us through his journey as a mathematician, software architect, and language…

Holiday Party

Jan 2 • 58 min

Hey all! This is our annual holiday show! We give away prizes and talk about random news stories :-D. Thanks to everyone who chatted with us on Discord, and looking forward to a super exciting 2019! I’ll be sending an email to all prize winners later…

Customer Bug Handling

Dec 4, 2018 • 66 min

Hey all! How do you find and triage bugs on other people’s machines when they don’t have the source code (or the knowledge to build it)? That’s what we explain in today’s episode! It’s one of the topics that’s rarely spoken about but extremely important…

Teaching Kids to Code

Nov 13, 2018 • 72 min

Hey all! First of all, sorry for the delay in publishing October’s episode. There are some pretty intense wildfires close to where we live, but it looks like things are getting under control. Huge thanks to all the firefighters! In this episode Patrick…

Reactive programming and the Actor model

Sep 28, 2018 • 85 min

Hey everyone! This episode is an absolutely fascinating interview with Jonas Bonér, creator of Akka. We dive into reactive programming, the actor model, and the Akka toolkit. Jonas also describes his journey as a developer that led him to create Akka and…

2018 Mailbag

Sep 6, 2018 • 73 min

Hey all! Since setting up the #questions channel in discord, a lot of you have written some phenominal and thought-provoking questions both there and via email, so this is a great time to go back through our favorites and answer them in a Mailbag episode!…

Concurrency

Jul 31, 2018 • 67 min

What is a thread/process? How can you speed up a program that requires a lot of compute resources? How can you have a single machine serve web pages to 100s of people, some of whom have slow connections? Patrick and I answer these questions on today’s…

Technical Arguments

Jul 1, 2018 • 91 min

Sunday is a non-traditional day for a new episode and this is definitely a non-traditional episode! Today we are talking about Technical Arguments. We cover the most common arguments/debates you will have on the job as a software engineer and how to make…

Building and Testing Web Services with Postman

May 31, 2018 • 73 min

Web services are for much more than building websites: they are one of the most common techniques for passing information among programs. Creating a web API for your program is a great way to access it from a browser, another program, or a mobile app.…

Julia

May 2, 2018 • 80 min

Julia may be the most requested language we have ever received on the show, so Patrick and I took some time of the past few weeks to get familiar with Julia and share our findings. Overall, it’s a really slick language that has data and process…

Code Documentation

Apr 4, 2018 • 84 min

Writing documentation is an art and there aren’t many cut-and-dry rules that will guarantee the right documentation quality. In this episode Patrick and I chat about our lessons learned and also cover a bunch of ways to document and write self-documenting…

Arduino

Mar 5, 2018 • 98 min

Ever want to build your own robot? We explain how to do this using Arduino! Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2018/03/episode-75-arduino.html

Cryptocurrency and Smart Contracts

Jan 30, 2018 • 58 min

Today we discuss Cryptocurrency and Smart Contracts with Amy Wan, CEO of Sagewise. Amy has a legal background and combines this with expertise in cryptocurrency, blockchain, ICOs, and smart contracts. Show Notes:…

Parallel Computing with Incredibuild

Dec 19, 2017 • 65 min

How can you use all of the computers in your lab/office at the same time to speed up tasks? Today we talk with Dori Exterman, CTO of Incredibuild, about parallel computing and the awesome tool Incredibuild has created that can run any multi-process…

Internationalization

Nov 28, 2017 • 66 min

How can you maintain a separate version of your app/site in all langauges and locales? How do you handle right-to-left text, various currencies, and a bunch of languages with non-ascii characters? We explain all this and more in Internationalization! Show…

Office Spaces

Oct 30, 2017 • 81 min

Today, we are going to talk about… office space! Not the hilarious 1999 movie directed by Mike Judge, but modern office spaces for engineers and developers. We cover office setups, desk setups, amenities, and more! We won’t cover IDEs (check out episode…

COBOL and Mainframe Computing

Sep 28, 2017 • 80 min

Did you know that there was a programming language co-invented by a consortium of government offices and top businesses (at the time)? Today we talk about that language: COBOL, and also discuss the mainframe computers of that era that ran COBOL. Show…

Puzzle Games with Mark Engelberg

Aug 17, 2017 • 112 min

Today we chat with Mark Engelberg about his background in software engineering and game design. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/08/episode-69-puzzle-games-with-mark.html

Soft Skills with SimpleProgrammer

Jul 19, 2017 • 103 min

Today we chat with John Sonmez about soft skills: communication, self-motivation, learning to learn, and negotiation, Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/07/episode-68-soft-skills-with.html

Cryptocurrency

Jun 30, 2017 • 86 min

Today we explain how cryptocurrency works and why it is possible to buy and sell electonic currency. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/06/episode-67-cryptocurrency.html

Code Reviews

May 30, 2017 • 56 min

In this episode we explain how code reviews work and why they are so important. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/05/episode-66.html

Testing on Mobile with Kobiton

May 15, 2017 • 48 min

In this episode we interview Josh and Adam from Kobiton. They describe the challenges with releasing a mobile app for many platforms, and how Kobiton allows one to test their app on many devices in the cloud. Show notes:…

Cryptography

Mar 30, 2017 • 72 min

In this episode we explain how data is encrypted and decrypted, and how you can use encryption in the things you build. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/03/episode-64-cryptography.html

Spring Framework

Feb 28, 2017 • 63 min

In this episode we interview Spencer Gibb and Mark Heckler from Pivotal, the company behind Spring Framework: a set of powerful enterprise Java libraries and services. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/02/episode-63-spring-framework.html

PHP and Hack

Jan 24, 2017 • 68 min

On this show we discuss PHP and Hack, an language that extends PHP. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2017/01/episode-62-php-and-hack.html

Clojure with Eric Normand

Dec 22, 2016 • 68 min

On this show we discuss Clojure and ClojureScript, and all the amazing things you can build with them. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2016/12/episode-61-clojure-with-eric-normand.html

Javascript For Mobile with Burke Holland

Nov 23, 2016 • 60 min

How to build great mobile apps with Javascript. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2016/11/episode-60-javascript-for-mobile.html

Deploying Software

Oct 31, 2016 • 71 min

How to distribute software so it works on other people’s computers. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2016/10/episode-59-deploying-software.html

Scaling Web Sites with Daniel Moore

Sep 27, 2016 • 55 min

This show is an interview with Daniel Moore about scaling web sites. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2016/09/episode-58-scaling-web-sites.html

Optimization

Aug 31, 2016 • 75 min

This show covers software optimization (how to make software run faster). Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2016/08/episode-57-optimization.html

Robotics

Jul 22, 2016 • 67 min

This show is an intro to robotics. Blog post: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2016/07/episode-56-robotics.html

Editor Wars

Jun 24, 2016 • 80 min

This show covers many different editors. Blog post: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2016/06/episode-55-editor-wars.html

Programming for the GPU

May 25, 2016 • 65 min

On this episode we invite Mark Harris, Chief Technologist at NVIDIA, to talk about programming for the GPU. Show notes: http://www.programmingthrowdown.com/2016/05/episode-54-programming-for-gpu.html

Open Source Communities

May 2, 2016 • 62 min

On this episode we invite Mikeal Rogers, Community Manager at the Node.JS Foundation, to talk about open source communities and organizing large open source projects.

Scientific Python

Mar 28, 2016 • 71 min

This show covers Scientific Python: A platform for data analysis, visualization, and reporting built on top of python. Book of the Show Jason: Masterminds of Programming Patrick: Redshirts

Udacity: Democratizing Education

Feb 24, 2016 • 66 min

This show covers Online/Continuing education. We ask the experts: How can more people get jobs in programming?

Congratulations!

Jan 21, 2016 • 70 min

This show celebrates 50 episodes of Programming Throwdown! We answer questions from the audience live on livecoding.tv .

Tamper Protection

Dec 21, 2015 • 82 min

This show covers Tamper Protection: How hackers are able to tamper with compiled programs and the programs that prevent tampering.

Source Control

Dec 7, 2015 • 63 min

This show covers Source Control: Various tools that keep history of your code and enable code collaboration. Book of the Show Jason: Kobolds Ate My Baby Patrick: Firefight

Ruby

Oct 12, 2015 • 69 min

This show covers Ruby: a multipurpose interpreted language for rapid development. Book of the Show Jason: Paranoia RPG Player’s Handbook Patrick: Lock In

R

Sep 10, 2015 • 66 min

This show covers R: a language suitable for data mining and machine learning. Book of the Show Jason: The hard thing about hard things http://amzn.to/1UqMjDD Patrick: Steel World http://amzn.to/1JMcsa5

Inside Video Game Programming

Aug 11, 2015 • 82 min

This show covers game development at a AAA company, featuring Dave Smith from Naughty Dog Inc. and Florent Devillechabrol from Ubisoft. Jason: The Mythical Man Month http://amzn.to/1DGOwbW ; Patrick: Armada http://amzn.to/1L4j2Pj

Logo Scratch Lego

Jul 10, 2015 • 66 min

This show covers several programming languages we used as kids. Book of the Show Jason: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid http://amzn.to/1LWYOpJ ; Patrick: Leviathan Wakes http://amzn.to/1HjpfAo

Debugging

Jun 5, 2015 • 99 min

This show covers Debugging: how to fix and maintain code across any language. Book of the Show Jason & Patrick: Mindhacking http://www.mindhacki.ng/

Fortran

May 7, 2015 • 70 min

This show covers Fortran: An old (but still very useful!) imperative language for numerical calculations. Books of the Show Jason: A Theory of Fun in Game Design http://amzn.to/1FShtR6 Patrick: Monster Hunter International http://amzn.to/1EeqWO2

Node.js

Apr 6, 2015 • 61 min

This show covers Node.js: A server-side platform for developing network applications. Books of the Show Jason: You Can Draw in 30 Days: The Fun, Easy Way to Learn to Draw in One Month or Less http://amzn.to/1CsrFsO Patrick: Abyss Beyond Dreams (Peter F.…

Unity

Feb 2, 2015 • 71 min

This show covers Unity: A Toolchain and set of three scripting languages primarily for making games. Tools of the show: Jason: Meld http://meldmerge.org/ Patrick: Space Marshals http://www.pixelbite.se/pbsite3/?page_id=7675

Rust

Jan 7, 2015 • 60 min

This show covers Rust: A memory-safe systems programming language. Tools of the show: Jason: This War of Mine Patrick: Vainglory.

SIMD

Nov 26, 2014 • 72 min

This show covers SIMD: A set of languages for fast array operations. Tools of the show: Jason: OpenEmu Patrick: Mint.com. Books of the show: Jason: Emacs Quick Reference Card: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/refcards/pdf/refcard.pdf Patrick: The Mote in…

Funky Languages

Oct 15, 2014 • 71 min

This show covers Funky Languages: esoteric languages that are created mostly for fun. Tools of the show: Jason: Open Broadcaster Software Patrick: Plex. Books of the show: Jason: Impro for Storytellers: http://amzn.to/1sMohKv Patrick: The Android’s Dream…

Swift

Sep 8, 2014 • 62 min

This show covers Swift, a language developed by Apple for iOS and OS/X. Tools of the show: Jason: Nextdoor Patrick: Waze. Books of the show: Jason: Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail… http://amzn.to/1rvKXbP Patrick: Red Seas Under Red Skies…

Haskell

Aug 7, 2014 • 62 min

This show covers Haskell, a statically-typed functional language. Tools of the show: Jason: Uber Patrick: Store Coupon Apps. Books of the show: Jason: Start With Why http://amzn.to/1uNg61I Patrick: Childhood’s End http://amzn.to/1s8Fmv

Databases

Jun 26, 2014 • 74 min

This show covers Databases. Tools of the show: Jason: nvAlt / nvPy Patrick: Arduino. Books of the show: Jason: Negotiating For Dummies http://amzn.to/1jS9Yem Patrick: Steelheart http://amzn.to/1lsRxBv

Design Patterns

May 13, 2014 • 69 min

This show covers Design Patterns. Tools of the show: Jason: VirtualBox Patrick: Bittorrent Sync. Books of the show: Jason: HTML5 Game Development Insights http://amzn.to/1g94JVS Patrick: The Martian http://amzn.to/1smEYc8

OpenSCAD

Mar 18, 2014 • 76 min

This show covers OpenSCAD and 3d modeling. Tools of the show: Jason: uSelect iDownload Patrick: Skulls of the Shogun. Books of the show: Jason: My Friend Dahmer http://amzn.to/1eOLNL8 Patrick: Make Magazine http://makezine.com/

Unix Commands

Jan 27, 2014 • 78 min

This show covers Unix Commands and How to Ace an Interview. Tools of the show: Jason: Duolingo Patrick: 123D Design. Books of the show: Jason: Locke and Key http://amzn.to/L2LmEq Patrick: Lies of Locke Lamora http://amzn.to/1dIUJjy

FPGAs

Nov 20, 2013 • 81 min

This show covers Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) programming. Tools of the show: Jason: Kaggle http://www.kaggle.com/ Patrick: KiCad http://www.kicad-pcb.org/ . Books of the show: Jason: Mahout in Action http://amzn.to/1eizgRS Patrick: Bebop to the…

CUDA and OpenCL

Sep 4, 2013 • 64 min

This show covers CUDA and OpenCL, languages targeting the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). Tools of the show: NES/SNES Together https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.mistertea.android.emu.nes…

Applied Artificial Intelligence

Jun 13, 2013 • 68 min

This show covers Applied Artificial Intelligence, techniques for applying AI to work or hobby projects. Tools of the show: WebM and FFMpeg. Books of the show: 2br02b http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21279 and The Code Book (Kindle: http://amzn.to/14zADaL),…

Theoretical Artificial Intelligence

Jun 4, 2013 • 73 min

This show covers Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, a deep dive into what AI is all about. Tools of the show: TypeScript and Ridiciulous Fishing. Books of the show: Dungeon (Paperback: http://amzn.to/11Iares) and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy…

Image Processing

Mar 26, 2013 • 66 min

This show covers Image Processing, techniques for manipulating images and extracting other useful information from them. Tools of the show: Moon+ Reader Pro and Spaceteam. Books of the show: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Kindle:…

Unit Testing

Feb 22, 2013 • 74 min

This show covers unit testing, a way to put your code through the ringer before you show it to your users. Tools of the show: JsFiddle and towel.blinkenlights.nl. Books of the show: The Lean Startup (Kindle: http://amzn.to/157xbEl ), (Hardcover:…

JVM Languages (Jython, Clojure, Scala)

Jan 30, 2013 • 60 min

This show covers some JVM languages, languages that are built on top of Java. Tools of the show: Ripple Emulator and Battle of the Bulge. Books of the show: Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction http://amzn.to/X6DpwS and Ready Player One…

Hadoop

Dec 26, 2012 • 67 min

This show covers Hadoop, a set of several languages and libraries for working with big data. Tools of the show: Emacs and Chrome Browser Sync. Books of the show: Hadoop: The Definitive Guide http://tinyurl.com/cp3mw32 and Anathem http://tinyurl.com/cas8bux

LaTeX

Dec 9, 2012 • 66 min

This show covers LaTeX, a digital typesetting language. Tools of the show: Cocos2d-X and Snapseed. Books of the show: Algorithms in C++ http://tinyurl.com/agbc8t7 and Head First Design Patterns http://tinyurl.com/ayxb7q6

Mailbag

Nov 25, 2012 • 80 min

This show covers some of the top questions asked by the fans.

Query Languages

Oct 28, 2012 • 87 min

This show covers Query Languages, programming languages designed at accessing data from databases. Tools of the biweek: Pixen and Downcast

BASIC

Sep 22, 2012 • 52 min

This show covers Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code (BASIC), a starter language for many programmers. Tools of the biweek: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup and Wireshark

Go

Sep 7, 2012 • 72 min

This show covers Go, an interpreted, low-level language that has native coroutine support. News:100000 DPI printer, Joyent Cloud ending lifetime support, Apple buys fingerprint company, Twitter caps 3rd party apps.

Java

Aug 3, 2012 • 78 min

This show covers Java, a semi-compiled language used heavily in web and mobile development. News: Ouya android gaming console, Is C/C++ Worth It?, Engineered Jellyfish. Tools of the BiWeek: Cygwin, MinGW and Macports, uShare.

Build Automation

Jul 3, 2012 • 69 min

This show covers build automation, scripts to streamline the build process. News: New Top Level Domains, Anatomy of Freemium, LinkedIn Passwords Leaked, $100 Masters Degree. The tools of the biweek are Apache Cordova (Formerly PhoneGap), Xbox Media Center…

Lua

May 29, 2012 • 69 min

This show covers Lua, an interpreted language designed to be embedded into larger applications. News: Facbeook IPO, Javascript Arduino programming, Brain Controlled Robots. The tools of the biweek are JDBM/BerkeleyDB and Audacity.

Interface Description Languages (IDLs)

May 1, 2012 • 73 min

This show covers Interface Descrption Languages (IDLs), such as thrift and protocol buffers. News: Sony fighting with PSP hackers, Pebble smartphone watch, Pacman runs on 0x10C, UF Computer Science cuts. The tools of the biweek are Sublime Text Editor and…

C++

Apr 10, 2012 • 75 min

This show covers C++, a general-purpose programming language. News: Visualizing code to fail faster, the future of the used game market, Prince of Persia source code found. The tools of the biweek are sfxr and DC universe online.

Dart

Mar 20, 2012 • 56 min

This show covers Dart, a client-side browser alternative to javascript. Dart currently only runs in Chrome, but dart code can be compiled to javascript and then run in any browser. News: Raspberry Pi, California allows autonomous cars, Stanford online…

Lisp

Feb 26, 2012 • 66 min

This show covers Lisp, one of the first functional langauge that is often used for academic purposes, but also has a place in industry. The episode talks about Cuda, how to write a Roguelike, becoming a good programming, and DOS games on Chrome. The tools…

Javascript

Aug 29, 2011 • 85 min

This show covers Javascript, the only client-side scripting language built into most modern browsers. The episode talks about Patrick’s move to Silicon Valley, Codecademy, The HP Touchpad Fire sale, and Minecraft’s Notch challenging Bethesda to Quake 3.…

HTML and CSS

Aug 6, 2011 • 74 min

This show covers HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), two of the three languages that make up most client-side Internet programming. The episode talks about the Humble Indie Bundle 3, Linux Kernel reaching 3.0, and the end of…

Prolog

Jul 9, 2011 • 80 min

This show covers Prolog (Programmable Logic), a rule based language based on deductive inferencing. The episode talks about the Zynga IPO, Google+, and types of coders (Computer Scientist, Programmer, and Developer). The tools of the biweek are FreeNX, a…

Objective-C

Jun 18, 2011 • 79 min

This show covers Objective-C, the premier language for iphone, ipad, and os/x app development. The episode talks about the upcoming Wii U console and Duke Nukem Forever, (possibly) the most offensive game ever made. After the news, the show discusses why…

Assembly

May 21, 2011 • 74 min

This show covers Assembly, the lowest level language used to program a computer. This episode talks about the amount of traffic Netflix is generating, how many ebooks Amazon now sells, Apple not standing up for its developers, how young is too young for…

C#

May 13, 2011 • 60 min

This show covers C# a CLI language designed by Microsoft. This episode talks about over the air updates, decompiling, and Ubuntu. The tools of the day are VLC, a cross-platform video player and PortableApps, a collection of applications able to run off a…

Matlab and Octave

Apr 27, 2011 • 73 min

This show covers Matlab, a matrix-based interpreted multiprocessing function language. This episode talks about cloud computing, gaming, and then DIY hardware. The tools of the day are TI MSP430 Launchpad, a hobbyist single board computer (SBC) and…

Erlang Programming Language

Apr 8, 2011 • 61 min

This show covers Erlang, a multiprocessing function language. The show talks about latest updates in C++ and java, then talks about open sourcing hardware. The tools of the day are MS Dependency Walker, a DLL resolver and Keepass, a password multiplexer.

Python Programming Language

Mar 25, 2011 • 69 min

This show covers Python, a popular interpreted language. The show begins with discussion on javascript and browser updates, then goes into the Goldman Sach’s stolen code trial, eco-friendly programming, and the origins of Oregon Trail. The tools of the…

C Programming Language

Mar 8, 2011 • 57 min

This show covers C, the foundation of all programming languages. We begin by introducing ourselves, then jump into talking about the PS3 hack and Nokia cell phone strategy. The tools of the day are Comix the comix book reader and Bitcoin, a virtual…