Picture Me Coding

Hosted by Erik Aker and Mike Mull

Technology

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Episodes

105

Latest episode

Aug 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

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: podcast@picturemecoding.com 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/

Listen to episodes

60 recent

August 14, 2026Episode 10455 min

The Monte Carlo Method

In 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 solve problems that are otherwise intractable. Programs using Monte Carlo were among the first programs created on digital computers. The Monte Carlo Method Nicholas Metropolis; S. Ulam Journal of the American Statistical Association, Vol. 44, No. 247. (Sep. Equation of State Calculations by Fast Computing Machines Hitting the Jackpot: The Birth of the Monte Carlo Method | LANL Monte Carlo Sampling Methods Using Markov Chains and Their Applications W. K. Hastings Biometrika, Vol. 57, No. 1. (Apr., 1970), 2014HaighPriestleyRope-LosAlamosBetsonENIAC.pdf The Unheralded Contributions of Klara Dan von Neumann Send us Fan Mail

July 24, 2026Episode 1031 hr 14 min

The Most Cited Papers from JACM

In 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 computing to real-time scheduling. Direct Search'' Solution of Numerical and Statistical Problems | Journal of the ACM Impossibility of distributed consensus with one faulty process | Journal of the ACM Robust principal component analysis? | Journal of the ACM Authoritative sources in a hyperlinked environment | Journal of the ACM Scheduling Algorithms for Multiprogramming in a Hard-Real-Time Environment | Journal of the ACM What is HITS Algorithm (Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search)? Send us Fan Mail

July 10, 2026Episode 1021 hr 0 min

The Prehistory of the Internet

This 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", some of the earliest attempts at networking, and the ideas that lead to packet switching and the Arpanet. SAGE: Semi-Automatic Ground Environment Air Defense System | MIT Lincoln Laboratory Memorandum for Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network The Arpanet and Computer Networks 60 Years of Networking - by Bruce Davies - Systems Approach Information Flow in Large Communication Nets (1961, Leonard Kleinrock, MIT) On Distributed Communications Networks (1962, Paul Baran, RAND) National Physical Laboratory Proposal for a Digital Communication Network by D. W. Davies June, 1966 Send us Fan Mail

June 26, 20261 hr 5 min

Software Development in 2046

In 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 for years to come. We boldly predict that in 2046 people will still not want robot dentists. The Time is Here for Just-in-Time Systems: Challenges and Opportunities MDASH: The MS Security Thing Services: The New Software | Sequoia Capital Understanding Spec-Driven-Development: Kiro, spec-kit, and Tessl Send us Fan Mail

June 12, 2026Episode 10054 min

Numerology

For 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 phenomenon of Benford's Law. Send us Fan Mail

May 29, 2026Episode 991 hr 14 min

Do You Even Schedule, Bro? Making a Digital Workout Partner with Doug Burke

This 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 interesting because he does not have a background in software development, and we wanted to learn more about what he's building. Send us Fan Mail

May 15, 2026Episode 981 hr 10 min

TokenMaxxing!: Agentic Software Development with Bob Farzin

In 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 we're seeing on the interwebs, including Steve Yegge's GasTown and Wes McKinney's discussion of agentic development in the context of Brooks's _Mythical Man Month_. "Introducing Beads: A coding agent memory system" Welcome to Gas Town — Steve Yegge's original essay The Future of Coding Agents — Yegge's follow-up Gas Town on GitHub — The actual tool How to Think About Gas Town — Steve Klabnik's analysis A Day in Gas Town — DoltHub's practical walkthrough Gas Town, Beads, and the Rise of Agentic Development — Software Engineering Daily interview with Yegge Top Coding Agents 2025 — Benched.ai comparison guide [April 8, Wes McKinney] AI Agents, The Mythical Agent Month, My Wild AI Coding Setup Send us Fan Mail

May 1, 2026Episode 971 hr 2 min

Patricia Selinger and the Birth of Query Optimization

In 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 Relational Database Management System . Access Path Selection paper (PDF) A Conversation with Pat Selinger — ACM Queue (2006) Database Dialogue with Pat Selinger — CACM (2008) Pat Selinger Speaks Out — SIGMOD Interview (PDF) Patricia Selinger — IBM History System R: Database Research Retrospective — TODS 1981 Graefe, G. (1995). The Cascades Framework for Query Optimization Leis et al. (2015). How Good Are Query Optimizers, Really? PVLDB Vol. 9 — introduces the Join Order Benchmark (JOB) and empirically audits modern optimizers. Send us Fan Mail

April 17, 2026Episode 961 hr 34 min

"Big-O Ops": An Interview with Kyle Risse

This 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 working on networks, infrastructure, linux server operations, and doing stressful operations stuff. In short, he has stories and he was kind enough to come on the show and share them with us! Send us Fan Mail

April 3, 2026Episode 9558 min

Hash Tables

Some 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 about the history of hashing and hash tables, and some recent results that overturned a 40 year old conjecture on the most efficient way to insert items. Scientists Find Optimal Balance of Data Storage and Time | Quanta Magazine [2111.00602] On the Optimal Time/Space Tradeoff for Hash Tables Speeding Up Hash Tables | Communications of the ACM https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/1734714.1734729 [2109.04548] Iceberg Hashing: Optimizing Many Hash-Table Criteria at Once Modern Dictionaries by Raymond Hettinger FOCS 2024 3B Optimal Bounds for Open Addressing Without Reordering Optimal Bounds for Open Addressing Without Reordering Send us Fan Mail