This episode is about the Turing Test, and Alan Turing's original description of the test in Computing Machinery and Intelligence. We also discuss a recent work by two UCSD researchers that claims that current LLMs pass the Turing Test. Computing Machinery and Intelligence Large Language Models Pass the Turing Test Pragmatic Engineer Podcast with Armin Ronacher Send us a text

In 1988 Mark Weiser of Xerox PARC coined the term "ubiquitous computing", and in 1991 he spelled out the particulars of this concept in a Scientific American article called "The Computer for the 21st Century". We discuss whether or not Weiser's vision was achieved. It's hard to argue that computers are now all around us, but it doesn't seem like they've faded into the background as Weiser hoped. The Computer for the 21st Century Designing Calm Technology Toward Ubiquitous Operatin...

This week we're talking about regular expressions, aka, regex. These are a favorite tool of programmers, but they also have a dark side. Do regex cause more problems than they solve? Can they be evil? We also discuss the origins of regular expressions, formal language theory, and finite automata. Now You've Got Two Problems XKCD: Regular Expressions Representation of Events in Nerve Nets and Finite Automata OWASP: ReDOS Send us a text

A continuation of our discussion about the history of Unix and its development at Bell Labs. Erik wonders why Unix became successful and which features were novel and important. Mike just wants to talk about cool pranks Group 1127 pulled off. Unix: A History and Memoir - Brian Kernighan The Unix Time-Sharing System Send us a text

This week we talk about the early days of Unix, primarily based on Brian Kernighan's book Unix: A History and Memoir, about his days at Bell Labs and the creation of Unix and C by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and other luminaries. https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-History-Memoir-Brian-Kernighan/dp/1695978552 https://dsf.berkeley.edu/cs262/unix.pdf https://cs3210.cc.gatech.edu/r/unix6.pdf Send us a text

This week we dip our toes into the river of theoretical computer science and immediately drown. We discuss the amazing and surprising result of researcher Ryan Williams about how space is a more powerful resource in computing than time. For Algorithms, Memory Is a Far More Powerful Resource Than Time | WIRED https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.17779 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JuWdXrCmWg Send us a text

This week we try to make sense of what were once called "NoSQL" databases, focusing on the early entries into the field like Bigtable, Dynamo and Cassandra. We try to explain how they differ from prior database systems and what motivated their creation. Bigtable: A Distributed Storage System for Structured Data Dynamo: Amazon’s Highly Available Key-value Store Cassandra - A Decentralized Structured Storage System Send us a text

This week we host our friends Bobak Farzin and Kevin Fahey to talk about their experiences building applications with AI tools. Both Bob and Kevin are very tech savvy in different ways, but neither is a full-time software developer. Yet both have had good experiences building functional applications with tools like Cursor and Claude Code. We discuss the benefits and drawbacks of these tools, and the challenges that Bob and Kevin found in building their own software. “Andre...

We're talking about databases again. Or database management systems, we're not totally sure. In any case, they are relational databases (or database management systems). The relational database has been the go-to system for storing structured data since the 1980s, and is still the most popular type of system to use for applications and business reporting. We discuss their history, what makes them relational, and our experiences with some of the better known commercial and op...

Jim Gray was a key innovator in the area of database technology and he won the Turing Prize in 1998. He was particularly influential with respect to the definition and formalization of transactions, and he identified and named the A, C, and D of ACID. Gray, an avid hiker and sailor, disappeared in 2007 while sailing out of San Francisco to the Farallon Islands, and no trace of him was ever found. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/behind-the-code-with-jim-gray/ http...

This week Matt Teichman, host of the Elucidations podcast, dropped by the show to chat about functional programming and its surprising relationship to linguistics and philosophy. Matt teaches Linguistics, Philosophy, and Computer Science at the University of Chicago and he also works on open-source software for the University of Chicago library, including an interesting OCaml project used by archivists called Attachment Converter. Thanks to our newest Patreon subscribers: Ralph Minderhou...

In this episode we talk to Jonathan Whitmire who designed the Picture Me Coding swag, logos, artwork (and t-shirts and stickers and coffee mugs!). He gives us a rundown on what it's like working alongside developers and what we talk about when we talk about UX. Send us a text

This week Mike and Erik talk about the local-first software movement. There's a pretty cool paper about it from 2019 called "Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud", and there's also a podcast, a company, and various projects. Come get inspired to build stuff! Send us a text

Mike and Erik analyze the tech news again. The AIs are hallucinating, but gamers are too because of Game Transfer Phenomenon. The Luddites are back for what's likely a futile effort to keep the robots from taking our jobs, but Mike things he can at least outrun them. Watching These Humanoid Robots Try to Run a Half Marathon Is Hilarious and BizarreProtecting NATS and the integrity of open source: CNCF’s commitment to the community | CNCFGame Transfer PhenomenonHow to Survive the A...

Today Mike and Erik are joined by John Benson, an attorney with a background in digital forensics who has been at the forefront of integrating LLMs into legal practice. The conversation ranges over the practice of law, digital security, and AI Find out more about John Benson's work here: https://john-benson.com/ Send us a text

This week Mike and Erik tackle Byzantine Fault Tolerance! But what's it all about? Gangsters? Generals? Constantinople? Take a journey with us as we sail off into the dizzying complexity of Byzantine faults. Links Some constraints and tradeoffs in the design of network communications | Proceedings of the fifth ACM symposium on Operating systems principlesNotes on Data Base Operating SystemsReaching Agreement in the Presence of Faults | Journal of the ACMThe Byzantine Generals Problem - Micr...

We have an entertaining and wide-ranging discussion with prominent computer scientist and educator David Beazley, known for his many contributions to the Python community. We talk about why programming is fun, and how he has created his memorable conference talks and innovative programming classes. We also touch on music, theater, academic life, and, of course, Dave's No Doubt tribute band. Show Notes: https://www.dabeaz.com/Sans-IO (https://sans-io.readthedocs.io/)Rust elev...

In this SCaLE wrap-up Mike and Erik discuss the final day of the conference and talks by Denver Gingerich called "What happens when hardware puts software freedom first? We built a router to find out" and Leslie Lamport titled "Coding isn't Programming", and we got to meet Leslie Lamport and take photos with him and give him Picture Me Coding stickers. Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/night-drift/the-horseman Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppb...

This week we are on location in the city of Pasadena, CA for Scale 22x, the Socal Linux Expo. We talked to people and went to talks and drank a lot of coffee. We do a debrief of some of the amazing work we heard about in the first few days of the conference. Stay tuned next week to hear what we learned from Leslie Lamport! Check out some stuff we learned about! - The Open Source Rover (from JPL) - Solomon Hykes Keynote: "Robots Building Robots" Send us a text

Every once in a while you come across a project where you’re like “Oh, dang, wish I’d thought of that”. That’s the case with this week’s guest, David R. Morrison. David is the founder of Applied Computing Research Labs (ACRL), and the creator of Simkube which allows you to record-and-replay Kubernetes simulations. Recently, he published an article in ACMQueue called "Simulation: An Underutilized Tool in Distributed Systems", which talks about simulation of distributed...