About this podcast
Picture Me Coding is a music podcast about software. Each week your hosts Erik Aker and Mike Mull take on topics in the software world and they are sometimes joined by guests from other fields who arrive with their own burning questions about technology.
Email us at: [email protected]
Patreon: https://patreon.com/PictureMeCoding
You can also pick up a Picture Me Coding shirt, mug, or stickers at our Threadless shop: https://picturemecoding.threadless.com/designs
Logo and artwork by Jon Whitmire - https://www.whitmirejon.com/
Episodes
The newest 20 of 110 episodes
- Are We All Going To Die? · 1 h 9 min · Season 4 Episode 109In this episode we explore the likelihood of existential risk from AI. We discuss the viewpoints of doomers and skeptics, and some of the scenarios that could lead to…
- Thanks for the Memory Part 2: Garbage Collection · 59 min · Season 4 Episode 108This week we conclude our discussion of dynamic memory allocation with a discussion of the history and implementation of garbage collectors. There are no mentions of raccoons…
- Thanks for the Memory Part I: Allocators · 1 h 7 min · Season 4 Episode 107This week we present the first of two episodes on dynamic memory allocation. We were going to talk about garbage collection, but realized we should probably discuss allocators…
- From the Academy to Industry with Alan Dyke · 1 h 1 min · Season 4 Episode 106In this episode we interview Alan Dyke, a colleague of Erik's who got his Ph.D from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he did research on Computer-Aided Software…
- DataCon LA · 60 min · Season 4 Episode 105This week we're talking about Mike's visit to DataCon LA 26. We talk about the conference, various talks he was able to see, and his own experience giving a talk. Compression…
- The Monte Carlo Method · 56 min · Season 4 Episode 104In this episode we discuss the Monte Carlo method, both the technique and its place in the history of computing. The Monte Carlo method is a set of tools that use probability to…
- The Most Cited Papers from JACM · 1 h 14 min · Season 4 Episode 103In this episode we discuss the 5 most-cited papers from the flagship journal of the Association for Computing Machinery, the JACM. The papers include everything from distributed…
- The Prehistory of the Internet · 1 h 0 min · Season 4 Episode 102This episode started with the question: who first had the idea to connect computers together to make a network? We explore JCR Licklider's ideas about an "Intergalactic Network"…
- Software Development in 2046 · 1 h 5 minIn this episode we discuss a couple of recent papers on just-in-time development and agentic systems and how we think they suggest trends that will affect software development…
- Numerology · 54 min · Season 4 Episode 100For the 100th episode of Picture Me Coding we talk about numbers. Mike talks about his favorite numbers, Erik talks about his favorite ports, and we discuss the surprising…
- Do You Even Schedule, Bro? Making a Digital Workout Partner with Doug Burke · 1 h 14 min · Season 4 Episode 99This week we were joined by our friend Doug Burke, who runs a company and has been working on his "digital life workout partner", a voice-activated LLM tool. Doug's story is…
- TokenMaxxing!: Agentic Software Development with Bob Farzin · 1 h 10 min · Season 4 Episode 98In this episode we invite back our friend Bob Farzin to discuss our personal experiences with using teams of agents to write software, and we try to parse out the experiences…
- Patricia Selinger and the Birth of Query Optimization · 1 h 2 min · Season 4 Episode 97In this episode we attempt to explain query optimization and where it came from. In particular we discuss Patricia Selinger's 1979 SIGMOD paper Access Path Selection in a…
- "Big-O Ops": An Interview with Kyle Risse · 1 h 34 min · Season 4 Episode 96This week Mike and Erik are joined by Kyle Risse. Erik met Kyle at Scale 23x in Pasadena this year while volunteering for the Tech Team. Kyle has a ton of experience in the field…
- Hash Tables · 59 min · Season 4 Episode 95Some recent articles about research on hash tables made us realize we probably didn't know enough about hash tables, one of the fundamental data structures in the biz. We talk…
- Scale 23x · 1 h 27 min · Season 4 Episode 94We give a report of our experiences at the 23rd version of the Southern California Linux Expo (Scale 23x) in Pasadena. Erik was a volunteer in the network group this year, so we…
- Talking Murderbot with Amy Salley · 1 h 32 min · Season 4 Episode 93In this episode we're joined again by Amy Salley, cohost of the Hugo, Girl! podcast, to help us discuss the Murderbot series of books by Martha Wells. We discuss our favorite…
- The History of NGINX · 57 min · Season 4 Episode 92This episode we look into the history of the web server NGINX and of web servers more generally. We play myth buster and try to investigate the widespread story that NGINX arose…
- Recreational Programming · 1 h 0 min · Season 4 Episode 91Does anyone program just for fun anymore? This episode we're talking about recreational programming, with a focus on A.K. Dewdney's Computer Recreations column from the 1980s…
- Functional Programming: Are We There Yet? · 53 min · Season 4 Episode 90To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Scheme, we decided to talk about functional programming: what it is, how's it going these days, and does it still matter in the era of AI…
