Two's Complement

Hosted by Ben Rady and Matt Godbolt

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Jun 2026

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About the show

If you come to a fork in the road, take it! Two’s Complement is a programming podcast, hosted by Matt Godbolt and Ben Rady; two programmers who both grew up wanting to make video games. One of them did, one of them didn’t, but now they both work together despite coming from very different backgrounds.

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60 recent

June 14, 202631 min

Programming in English

Ben sets out to learn Rust by only reading it, while Matt wonders if you can learn to land a plane from a book. Also: is snark a portmanteau?

May 25, 202643 min

The Rabbit Was Always There

Ben asks what happens when you curl google.com, and Matt peels back HTTP until the rabbit turns out to have been in the hat all along. Then a USB hub stages a dramatic intervention.

April 11, 202649 min

Speed of Thought

Ben has stopped talking to Claude directly. Matt hasn't opened his editor in days. They try to work out whether this is fun, programming, or a very expensive slot machine.

March 9, 202646 min

Measure Twice, Optimize Once

Ben asks a simple question about performance and Matt talks for 46 minutes. The one true use case for linked lists is revealed, and a part three is threatened.

February 14, 202645 min

How Fast Is Fast?

Ben interviews Matt with a deceptively simple question: make my program go fast. 44 minutes later, robot dogs are falling over, Grace Hopper's wire makes an appearance, and Matt still hasn't gotten the job.

January 10, 202627 min

Gaming on Linux

Ben wipes his PC over Thanksgiving and installs Ubuntu for gaming. Matt recalls the dark days of himem.sys and IRQ conflicts. The universe was created last Thursday, and someone gets a hangover.

December 6, 202524 min

Factorio

Ben's new TCP backpressure explanation: conveyor belts full. Matt zooms out and mistakes his factory for a Pentium 2. Ben plans to switch to Linux gaming; Matt's start bar keeps popping up and he's had it.

November 13, 202542 min

Vibe Coding and Robot Teammates

Ben worries replacing juniors with LLMs creates a future hiring crisis - who'll train the robot-wranglers? Matt blames COVID brain fog, then proves it by botching NP-completeness. Capitalism is bad at escaping local minima.

October 12, 202543 min

Conference Talks: Some Assembly Required

Matt returns from CppCon with a cold, three talks, and a keynote title Reddit hates. Ben immediately declares Reddit dumb. The hosts discuss C++ reflection, the unforgivable renaming of the Sears Tower, and why conference attendees should stand like Pac-Man.

September 12, 202541 min

Running Programs

Matt and Ben discuss running in production; from running processes in screen to battling systemd configuration files. Ben sketches out daemonization rituals while Matt channels Tolkien to explain process hierarchies. Our hosts discover that Ansible playbooks are just bash scripts with better PR, and everyone still Googles journalctl syntax.