Mr. 4th Programming Conversations

Hosted by Allen Webster

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Latest episode

Jul 2024

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EN-US

About the show

Allen Webster, the creator of the Mr. 4th Programming YouTube channel, interviews programmers on their views and experiences of programming. Topics include trends in independent software culture, insights about being an effective software developer, the strengths and weaknesses of specific techniques and technologies, and much more. Find more about Mr. 4th at mr4th.com

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14 recent

July 24, 2024Episode 41 hr 21 min

"Terminal.Click" with Abner Coimbre

I talk with Abner Coimbre about his experimental graphical terminal emulator Terminal. Click We start off talking about Abner's personal interest in the terminal. We talk about his decision to build a terminal that doesn't talk to a shell, and the pros and cons of working without the shell. Abner discusses new features that he is exploring that can bring out non-textual possibilities for a terminal interface. We talk about the lifecycle and release timing for personal projects like Terminal.Click. And a lot more along the way. Links: See some Terminal.Click features (https://terminal.click/podcast/) Abner's Software You Can Love talk, and his conversation with Mitchell Hashimoto (https://terminal.click/media/) Look at the shell innovations in TempleOS (http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-templeos/)

May 22, 2024Episode 32 hr 4 min

"Boundaries of Language Design" with Andrew Kelley & Ginger Bill

I talk with Andrew Kelley and Ginger Bill about the position of classical languages in the textual programming paradigm. We talk about what makes a programming system suited to the native computing layer, interfaces for constructing software, visual programming vs visualizations of data, alternative input devices for programming, mapping programs down to the existing C-like tool chains, places to get started with compiler construction, and more. Links: Andrew Kelley - https://andrewkelley.me/ Ginger Bill - https://www.gingerbill.org/ Zig - https://ziglang.org/ Odin - https://odin-lang.org/ Light Table - http://lighttable.com/

April 17, 2024Episode 21 hr 35 min

"Visual Programming: Lattice" with John Austin

I talk with John Austin about his visual programming system called Lattice. We talk about the ideas behind the tool, John's vision for Lattice, the initial inspiration for the project, John's preferences for where to rely on visual programming and where to rely on text, and more. Links: website - johnaustin.io mastodon - https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@johnaustin bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/johnaustin.bsky.social twitter - https://twitter.com/kleptine announcement forum post - https://forum.unity.com/threads/lattice-visual-scripting-for-ecs.1508402/ blog post - https://johnaustin.io/articles/2024/lattice-now-compiles-to-net-il yfiles - https://www.yworks.com/yfiles-overview

March 12, 2024Episode 11 hr 22 min

"Local First Software and the Automerge CRDT" with Peter van Hardenberg

A recast of the Handmade Seattle 2023 podcast, in which I interviewed Peter van Hardenberg, of Ink and Switch, to learn about the lab, local first software, and their research into "Conflict-free Replicated Data Types" or CRDTs for short. We discuss: The primary ideals of the Ink and Switch lab, the idea of local first software, and the technical challenges that the lab works to bring us more local first software. Links: Ink & Switch - https://www.inkandswitch.com/ Peritext - An Ink & Switch paper and research project on a rich text CRDT - https://www.inkandswitch.com/peritext/ Automerge Quick Start - https://automerge.org/docs/quickstart/

November 18, 2023Episode 1055 min

"Explainer Videos" with VoxelRifts

I talk with VoxelRifts to learn more about his journey into programming, how he found low level programming, and why his low level explainer videos are so good. In this conversation we discuss: Learning programming, difficulties and advantages to learning C, learning low level topics through projects, and what goes into one of VoxelRifts explainer videos. Links: VoxelRifts Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@voxelrifts VoxelRifts Discord: https://discord.com/invite/8rtYjQkqDF

October 18, 2023Episode 91 hr 21 min

"Compilers and JITs" with Yasser Arguelles Snape

Here I talk with Yasser Arguelles Snape to learn about his work on compiler optimizers, and pick his brain about the architecture of low level software systems. We discuss his experience as a young programmer, his work on Cuik and TB, the LLVM optimizer and what could be improved in a new iteration, the tradeoffs of ahead-of-time compilation and just-in-time compilation, various views of how debugging could be architected, and the benefits of having a rich run time for applications. Links: Cuik - https://github.com/RealNeGate/Cuik Yasser's Recommended Resources for Learning Optimizers: https://gist.github.com/RealNeGate/d0d45b74d7352872d4cf2470a600fbbb https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rjsimmon/15411-f15/lec/10-ssa.pdf https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/c2-ir95-150110.pdf https://inria.hal.science/hal-01723236/file/sea-of-nodes-hal.pdf

September 14, 2023Episode 81 hr 11 min

"Web Programming Crash Course" Part 2

I talk with Bret Hudson and Ben Visness to get a crash course on the basics and practical aspects of web programming. Our conversation is split into two parts. In this part we discuss: architecting a web server, Node JS fault tolerance and concurrency, setting up an efficient work flow for developing a web page or web server, setting up production and development environments, docker, and OAuth. Links: Ben Visness - https://bvisness.me/ Bret Hudson - https://brethudson.com/ Handmade Network - https://handmade.network/ OAuth2 Spec - https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6749

September 14, 2023Episode 71 hr 3 min

"Web Programming Crash Course" Part 1

I talk with Bret Hudson and Ben Visness to get a crash course on the basics and practical aspects of web programming. Our conversation is split into two parts. In this part we discuss: working with web APIs, the structure of HTTP, REST APIs, the purpose of storing data in a database, selecting and maintaining a database, database security, and other forms of security vulnerability. Links: Ben Visness - https://bvisness.me/ Bret Hudson - https://brethudson.com/ Handmade Network - https://handmade.network/ Little Bobby Tables - https://xkcd.com/327/ Let's Encrypt - https://letsencrypt.org/ OWASP Top Ten - https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/ OWASP Cheat Sheet - https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/index.html SQLite Query Planner - https://www.sqlite.org/queryplanner.html ChiDB (Building a Database) - http://chi.cs.uchicago.edu/chidb/index.html

August 17, 20231 hr 11 min

"Orca" with Martin Fouilleul

Here I talk with Martin Foilleul leader of the Orca project. Our conversation starts with the origin of the Orca project, and then branches out from there to cover various aspects of what Orca is, the way it differs from other technologies in the same space, and the reasons that the long term vision of the project might be plausible. Links: Orca - https://orca-app.dev/ Martin - https://www.forkingpaths.dev/ Martin's YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOkEIuC_4kITGD9_ugl0tig As We May Think - Vannevar Bush - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework - Doug Engelbart - https://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/papers/scanned/Doug_Engelbart-AugmentingHumanIntellect.pdf The Mother of All Demos - Doug Engelbart - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5PgQS3ZBWA&list=PLCGFadV4FqU3flMPLg36d8RFQW65bWsnP Xanadu - Ted Nelson - https://xanadu.com/ Information Management: A Proposal - Tim Berners Lee - https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html CSS Paintings - Diana Smith - https://diana-adrianne.com/

July 12, 2023Episode 51 hr 23 min

"Handmade F#" with Matthew Crews

Here I talk with Matthew Crews - the from the Fast F# YouTube channel. Our conversation starts with Matthew's journey to becoming a programmer who cares about performance. We touch on different styles of educational materials, and what works at different stages of the learning process, and what we can do as programmers to improve over time. We talk about how the "Handmade" ethos translates to the F# world, the idea of "Domain Drive Design" and how it might relate or contrast with "Data Oriented Design", whether knowing about performance concerns makes programming harder, how we should go about educational materials for programmers, and more. Links: Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@FastFSharp Email - hi@fastfsharp.com