CoRecursive: Coding Stories
The stories and people behind the code. Hear stories of software development from interesting people.
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Story: Code, Kickflips and Crunch Time - Mick West's Neversoft Journey
04/02/2024
Story: Code, Kickflips and Crunch Time - Mick West's Neversoft Journey
Meet Mick West, whose career began in an unusual office setup — sandwiched between a kebab shop and a phone sex hotline. From there he worked all over Manchester, making computer games for Tiertex and Ocean. Career opportunies brought him to California and to his own game dev company, Neversoft. At Neversoft, navigating team growth and tight deadlines, Mick played a key role in creating "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater." This wasn't just another game; it was a huge hit and secured Mick's legacy in the gaming world. Join us as we explore Mick West's journey from a quirky start to the heights of video game innovation and beyond. Discover the resilience, adaptability, and teamwork that fueled his success and how he continues to explore new horizons. How did he tackle the technical challenges that came his way, and what can we learn from his relentless pursuit of the next big thing?
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Story: Leaving LinkedIn - Choosing Engineering Excellence Over Expediency
03/04/2024
Story: Leaving LinkedIn - Choosing Engineering Excellence Over Expediency
What if your dedication to doing things right clashed with your company’s fast pace? Chris Krycho faced this very question at LinkedIn. His journey was marked by challenges: from the nuances of remote work to the struggle of influencing company culture, and a critical incident that put his principles to the test against the company’s push for speed. Chris’s story highlights the tension between the need for innovation and the importance of project health. This all led Chris to a pivotal decision: to stay and compromise his beliefs or to leave in pursuit of work that aligned with his principles. He chose the latter. Join us as we dive into Chris’s compelling story, exploring the challenges of advocating for principled engineering in a world that often prioritizes quick wins over long-term value.
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Story: Beautiful Code - Inside Greg Wilson's Vision for Software Design
02/02/2024
Story: Beautiful Code - Inside Greg Wilson's Vision for Software Design
Greg Wilson has been on a decades-long quest to transform how we teach and talk about software design. From getting rejections for using the term “beautiful code,” to empowering scientists through workshops on Python and Unix, Greg has pushed to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Join us as Greg shares his failures and epiphanies along the way. You’ll hear how he revolutionized research computing by showing physicists the power of profilers. How he taught grad students the elegance of shell scripts. And how he’s crusaded to create a shared language to discuss software architecture with the nuance of true craftsmanship. Greg’s captivating journey reveals that with perseverance and the right examples, we can elevate software design discussion to an art form. But that we’ve got a long way to go. You’ll come away enlightened and eager to level up your own understanding of software design.
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Story - Code as a Lifeline: Brain Injury Sparks Python Mastery
01/02/2024
Story - Code as a Lifeline: Brain Injury Sparks Python Mastery
What if your dreams were suddenly ripped away? What if your talents vanished, your passions erased? That's what happened to Jason McDonald when a traumatic brain injury at 16 ravaged his planned destiny of becoming a doctor. Jason painfully rebuilt his ind and body from scratch - relearning to read, write, even speak. A serendipitous discovery of coding ignited a new passion within Jason. He dove into the world of Python, even writing a popular programming book. His is a story of the incredible resilience of the human spirit when faced with life-altering challenges. One that calls us to embrace our own vulnerabilities as gateways to growth.
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Story - From 486 to Vue.js: Evan You's Full-Time Gamble on Open Source
12/04/2023
Story - From 486 to Vue.js: Evan You's Full-Time Gamble on Open Source
From the early days of exploring creative possibilities on a 486 computer in his childhood to developing one of today's most popular web frameworks, Evan You's journey is a tale of passion and innovation. Evan started Vue.js while working at Google, just wanting to scratch his own itch for a lightweight JavaScript framework. But soon Vue started to gain a huge following. Eventually Evan then faced a tough dilemma - should he take a leap of faith and devote himself fully to his fledgling open source project? Hear Evan's firsthand story of that key career transition. How the explosive user feedback at Vue conferences gave him confidence. But also the challenges he faced by putting himself directly in the line of fire from unhappy users. It's an inspiring journey - from a developer just trying to solve his own problems to the leader of one of today's most popular web frameworks. Hear the very human story behind Vue.js.
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Story: Platform Takes The Pain
11/02/2023
Story: Platform Takes The Pain
How did Spotify scale from 10 engineers to 100s to 1000s ...without slowing down? Without becoming corporate? Facing an IPO deadline, Pia Nilsson worked with 300 teams to transform how Spotify built software. She spearheaded a movement that led them from working in silos to a unified developer platform. Hear the inside story of how Spotify's Platform teams embraced transparency and customer focus to create Backstage — now used by companies worldwide. It's an amazing tale of ingenuity and perseverance. Hear Spotify's secret to scaling engineering without losing speed and independence. Don't miss it!
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Story: Sloot Digital Coding System
10/02/2023
Story: Sloot Digital Coding System
Lost treasure. Conspiracy theories. Impossible tech demos. Jan Sloot claimed to have invented revolutionary data compression that could fit a full movie into a tiny smart card chip. Top executives and investors witnessed his demos and became true believers, ready to bankroll this company into the stratosphere. But was it all an elaborate illusion? Join me as I unravel the perplexing story of Jan Sloot, the eccentric Dutch TV repairman who dazzled the tech world with his compression claims. Discover the shady details and follow the bizarre twists and turns, as we try to separate fact from fiction in the puzzling case of the Sloot Digital Coding System.
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Story: Configuring Identity: Adam Jacob and the Search for Self in Software
09/01/2023
Story: Configuring Identity: Adam Jacob and the Search for Self in Software
Today, we go behind the scenes at Chef - the game changing infrastructure automation tool. Adam Jacob created Chef, and it became a massively popular DevOps tool. But despite Chef's success, Adam constantly battled self-doubt and finding his footing as a leader. In this raw episode, Adam shares how the pressure of going from sysadmin to startup CEO caused an identity crisis. He opens up about the motivational speech that left him in tears, realizing his self-worth was too tied to Chef's outcomes.
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The Science of Learning to Code
08/02/2023
The Science of Learning to Code
Learning to code can feel impossible. Like facing a sheer rock wall with no ropes or harnesses. But what if there was a path up the mountain? A trail blazed smooth by master coders who went before? In this episode, we'll follow that path. We'll hear the stories of legends like Seymour Papert, who championed active, project-based learning. Of Fred Brooks, who discovered that pairing accelerates learning. And more. The research shows that with the right methods, motivation, and support, anyone can master learning curves and summit. So join me as we uncover the science behind learning to code. You'll walk away fired up, equipped with proven techniques to unlock your potential and conquer new technical skills. The climb is on!
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Story: A Dark Room
07/03/2023
Story: A Dark Room
Have you ever been frustrated with your job? Maybe not burnt out, but getting close to there? You used to love what you did, and it felt so creative and empowering, but then it starts to feel a bit more cookie cutter. Have you ever been frustrated with your whole life? The daily grind has taken what you love and it just doesn't feel the same anymore. Some of the magic just has slowly faded away. You don't know when it started, but it did. Today's guest is Amir Rajan. He's hard to describe. Is he a developer? Yes. An artist who sold everything that he owned for indie game development. Yes. The subject of a New Yorker profile? Yes, all of that. And also, somebody who got frustrated with his life and left everything behind.
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Story: Quitting (And Then Rejoining) Stack Overflow
06/02/2023
Story: Quitting (And Then Rejoining) Stack Overflow
Today, we meet Ben Dumke-von der Ehe, one of the early developers on the Stack Overflow team. He was on the front lines as the platform transformed how programmers worked. And he embodies the spirit of Stack Overflow: Its transparency, playfulness, and even some of its struggles to be as welcoming and friendly as it should be. But you'll see what I mean. So stick around as Ben takes us on a journey through the building of Stack Overflow. Get ready for a candid inside look at the creation of a platform that would become an essential part of the developer community and the internet as we know it.
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Story: From Project Management to Data Compression Innovator
05/02/2023
Story: From Project Management to Data Compression Innovator
How do you accomplish something massive over time? I've had the chance to meet with a number of exceptional software developers and it's something I always wonder about. Today, I might have an answer with the incredible story of Yann Collet. Yann was a project manager who went from being burnt out on corporate life to becoming one of the most sought-after developers in the world. What happens when you build something so impressive and valuable that it essentially becomes invisible? And how do you do that when your day job is mainly organizing spreadsheets and keeping timelines on track? Yann built LZ4 and ZStandard - two of the world's fastest compression algorithms that have transformed databases, operating systems, file systems, and much more. We'll go back in time to Yann's initial steps with programming, his game-changing discoveries along the way and how his devotion to data compression hobby led him to create something that saves billions of dollars worldwide. Episode Links
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Story: JSON vs XML
04/03/2023
Story: JSON vs XML
Today's guest is Douglas Crockford. He's sharing the story of JSON, his discovery of JavaScript's good parts, and his approach to finding a simple way to build software. Also, his battles against XML, against complexity, his battles to say that there's a better way to build software. This is foundational stuff for the web, and Doug is an iconoclast
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Story: Sun's Mobile Blunders
03/02/2023
Story: Sun's Mobile Blunders
Shai Almog worked at Sun on Mobile JVMs just as phones started to turn from phones into something else. Sun had deep expertise in mobile development, and amazing engineering driven culture and relationships with manufacturers and operators. And yet interal politics and the collapse of its server market made it hard to get things done. At Sun, as the mobile market changed, Shai and his friend Chen Fishbein launched a popular UI toolkit. Today Shai shares their struggles at Sun and after it to shape mobile UI development.
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Story: Shipping Graphing Calculator
02/02/2023
Story: Shipping Graphing Calculator
I've been on many projects that get canceled. We're building cool stuff. We're going above and beyond, and we're excited. But the project encounters reality, shifting priorities, or budgeting constraints, and the work never goes anywhere. It always feels tragic, but then I move on. But what if I didn't let a project get canceled? What if I couldn't accept that? That is what Ron Avitzur's story is all about. He is the creator of "Graphing Calculator," and he would not let it be canceled.
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Story: The Unfulfilled Engineer
01/02/2023
Story: The Unfulfilled Engineer
Nothing good comes from being insecure about your worth, especially at your job. That's what today's episode is about. That's what today's guest is here to discuss. It's a slow burn, but if you listen to the end, I think you will value yourself more professionally. My Guest is Don Mckay. Someone longtime listeners will undoubtedly know.
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Story: DOOMed to Fail
12/02/2022
Story: DOOMed to Fail
Today Rebecca Burger Becky Heineman shares the tale of porting Doom to the 3DO console under extreme conditions. There is an engine to tweak, deadlines to hit, hardware acceleration to get working, and dramatic rock anthems to record. We also learn about how game piracy led her to game development and what it was like to do game development in the mania of the mid-nineties. Finally, we close with Becky's advice on learning bare metal development skills.
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Story: Software World Tour
11/02/2022
Story: Software World Tour
Today story is from Son Luong Ngoc who shares what’s it was like for him to work and live in many different countries around the world, including working for AliBaba at the Xixi campus in Hangzhou, China. It’s a story of a software developer finding a place that fits them, a place that suits them.
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Story: Android's Unlikely Success
10/03/2022
Story: Android's Unlikely Success
What could you accomplish if your teammates were all excited and determined to hit some project timelines? What is it like for a group of people to give it all they have? That's what today is about. Chet Haase from the Android team is here to share the story of the early days of Android, the mobile operating system that powers the majority of phones worldwide. We'll cover the years from 2005 to around 2011. It's a wild story.
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Story: From Prison To Programming
09/02/2022
Story: From Prison To Programming
I believe that getting underrepresented groups into software development is a good thing. This is not a controversial opinion until you start talking about felons. Today's guest is Rick Wolter. He's an iOS developer who served 18 years in prison for second degree murder. Rick killed somebody and for some that's all they need to know about Rick. But today's episode is about Rick's path to redemption him, teaching himself to code in prison, smuggling in a Python interpreter, and then getting out and trying to get a job as a dev when you're a felon.
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CPAN - This Day In History
08/01/2022
CPAN - This Day In History
CPAN was the first open-source software module repository. And on this day, Aug 1st, in 1995, CPAN was first announced to a private group of PERL users. If you are building things today by pulling in various packages from various open source places – and really, who isn’t – then the history of how this world came to be is essential.
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Story: The History and Mystery Of Eliza
07/05/2022
Story: The History and Mystery Of Eliza
I recently got an email from Jeff Shrager, who said he'd been working hard to solve a mystery about some famous code. Eliza, the chatbot, was built in 1964, and she didn't answer questions like Alexa or Siri. She asked questions. She was a therapist chatbot and quickly became famous after being described in a 1964 paper. But here is the mystery. We're not sure how the original version worked. Joseph Weizenbaum never released the code. But Jeff tracked it down, and some of the things we thought we knew about Eliza turned out to be wrong.
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Chat: Why still 80 columns?
06/01/2022
Chat: Why still 80 columns?
On June 1st, 2014, the following question showed up on hacker news: "Why is 80 characters, the standard limit for code width." You probably know what happens next. People started to post their opinions and the comments and other people started to disagree. The posts spread around the internet. So that is going to be today's show: Let's answer this question. It's a question about traditions and teamwork, and how preexisting idioms shape us and help us, but sometimes restrict us.
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Story: LISP in Space
05/02/2022
Story: LISP in Space
Have you ever had a unique approach to a problem and been excited to use it, but you're met with skepticism? Today's story: what happens if you take someone who's passionate about LISP and put them in an organization where that's just not how they write software. Today's story is about getting LISP into space.
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Chat: April Fools' Is Cancelled
04/01/2022
Chat: April Fools' Is Cancelled
On this day in 2014 "lame april fools' jokes" were banned from hacker news. Today in our first This-Day-in-History segment, I want to share some of history not just of April Fools', but of tech pranks in general, all leading up to 2014. Why were pranks and April Fools' jokes traditionally celebrated in tech? Why are they now considered as dang said, "lame?"? And is there anything we can do to save them? Those are today's questions.
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Story: The Story Graph with Nadia Odunayo
03/02/2022
Story: The Story Graph with Nadia Odunayo
Whenever I work on a side project, I can't help but daydream of it taking off in a big way. For today's guests, something like that did happen. When Nadia started building her side project, she didn't know that it would end up spreading virally. She didn't know that it would end up competing with an Amazon product. She didn't know that keeping it up would be something that would drive her close to tears.
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Story: Serenity OS
02/01/2022
Story: Serenity OS
How would you build an operating system? My answer is I wouldn't. First off, I don't know how. And the second thing is it seems like to large of a task. It took thousands of developers to build Windows XP. But actually, it is possible to build an operating system from scratch. My guest is doing it. Andreas Kling created SerenityOS starting from an empty Git repository. So today, I find out how he did it, how this is possible. But mainly today, I find out why. Why build an operating system from scratch? And it all started in the 2010s when Andreas worked at Apple.
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Chat: The Internet Is Made of Duct Tape
01/02/2022
Chat: The Internet Is Made of Duct Tape
Today, I have two of my favorite guests together: Krystal Maughan and Don McKay. We are going to be sharing strange and interesting facts about computing.
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Story: Cocoa Culture
12/02/2021
Story: Cocoa Culture
Today, I found an expert on observing developer cultures. Hansen Hsu worked on the AppKit team at Apple, and he's here to talk about this mushy concept called culture. How does it manifest? How does it affect what people build? And how can it lead to beautiful software?
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Story: Leaving Debian
11/02/2021
Story: Leaving Debian
Today’s story is an insider view of Debian. One of the oldest Linux distributions and probably one of the longest-running volunteer-based open-source projects.
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