Intro topic: Getting an entry-level job

News/Links:

• Mario Kart 64 Fully Decompiled
  • https://gbatemp.net/threads/mario-kart-64-decompilation-project-reaches-100-completion.671104/
• Q-Learning is not yet scalable
  • https://seohong.me/blog/q-learning-is-not-yet-scalable/
• Grover’s Algorithm
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQWpF2Gb-gU&vl=en
• OrangePi has a RISC-V SBC
  • https://linuxgizmos.com/orangepi-rv2-a-cost-effective-risc-v-board-with-m-2-2280-slot-and-dual-gigabit-ethernet/
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick
  • The Will of the Many (James Islington)
    • https://amzn.to/44Dznsz
• Jason
  • The Intelligence Trap
    • https://amzn.to/3TqoKCB
      
      

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick
  •  Pokemon Odyssey
    • https://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonROMhacks/comments/1l9zdta/pok%C3%A9mon_odyssey_final_release/
• Jason
  • Netflix Games
    • https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=6891422865930303475&hl=en_US
      
      

Topic: 

• Why
  • Speed up development
  • Catch errors faster than type checking/compiling
  • Writing tedious boilerplate code
  • Ask questions and learn local information
  • Look good for hiring managers
• How
  • Extensions for VSCode & other IDEs for inline suggestions
  • Chat with a selection/file
  • Command-line Tools run at the root directory
  • Local vs Cloud
• Examples
  • Copilot (VSCode extension)
    • Use the experimental mode
  • Cursor (Custom IDE)
    • Jumps to suggest changes in other places
    • Similar to copilot experimental mode
  • RooCode (VSCode extension)

Intro topic: Video Game Prices

News/Links:

• Step one: Jump in the Lava - Abyssoft
  • https://youtu.be/WdadpHLAfdA?si=oXYnhB0EdkR_RaPE
• Scalable world models for continuous control
  • https://www.tdmpc2.com/
• Clever code is probably the worst code you could write - Engineer’s Codex
  • https://read.engineerscodex.com/p/clever-code-is-probably-the-worst
• A new, open source text-to-speech model called Dia has arrived to challenge ElevenLabs, OpenAI and more
  • https://venturebeat.com/ai/a-new-open-source-text-to-speech-model-called-dia-has-arrived-to-challenge-elevenlabs-openai-and-more/
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick
  • The Muscle Ladder - Jeff Nippard
    • https://amzn.to/44Dznsz
• Jason
  • Metaphysics of War
    • https://amzn.to/4jMjvZ5
      
      

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick
  • Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket
• Jason
  • Phi-4
    • https://huggingface.co/spaces/microsoft/phi-4-multimodal
      
      

Topic: Memory Management

• Motivation
  • Avoid thrashing / crashes
  • Allocate resources efficiently
  • Keep high uptime
• Where
  • OS Level
    • Heap management
    • Virtual Memory
  • Language/Compiler Level
    • Cpp
    • Garbage collection
    • Ownership
• Tools
  • Instrumentation
    • Export to Datadog / Grafana
  • Python: psutil & tracemalloc
  • Valgrind
• What to do when your program uses too much memory?
  • Reduce data sizes
    • Compression
    • References
    • Lazy initializer
    • Generators & Back Pressure
  • Ring buffers
  • Arena allocators
  • Disk based caching

Intro topic: Grills

News/Links:

• You can’t call yourself a senior until you’ve worked on a legacy project
  • https://www.infobip.com/developers/blog/seniors-working-on-a-legacy-project
• Recraft might be the most powerful AI image platform I’ve ever used — here’s why
  • https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/ai-image-video/recraft-might-be-the-most-powerful-ai-image-platform-ive-ever-used-heres-why
• NASA has a list of 10 rules for software development
  • https://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/cosc345/resources/nasa-10-rules.htm
• AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT performance estimates leaked: 42% to 66% faster than Radeon RX 7900 GRE
  • https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/amd-estimates-of-radeon-rx-9070-xt-performance-leaked-42-percent-66-percent-faster-than-radeon-rx-7900-gre 

Book of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • The Player of Games (Ian M Banks)
    • https://a.co/d/1ZpUhGl (non-affiliate)
• Jason: 
  • Basic Roleplaying Universal Game Engine
    • https://amzn.to/3ES4p5i
      
      

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • Pokemon Sword and Shield
• Jason: 
  • Features and Labels ( https://fal.ai )

Topic: Reinforcement Learning

• Three types of AI
  • Supervised Learning
  • Unsupervised Learning
  • Reinforcement Learning
• Online vs Offline RL
• Optimization algorithms
  • Value optimization
    • SARSA
    • Q-Learning
  • Policy optimization
    • Policy Gradients
    • Actor-Critic
    • Proximal Policy Optimization
• Value vs Policy Optimization
  • Value optimization is more intuitive (Value loss)
  • Policy optimization is less intuitive at first (policy gradients)
  • Converting values to policies in deep learning is difficult
• Imitation Learning
  • Supervised policy learning
  • Often used to bootstrap reinforcement learning
• Policy Evaluation
  • Propensity scoring versus model-based
• Challenges to training RL model
  • Two optimization loops
    • Collecting feedback vs updating the model
  • Difficult optimization target
    • Policy evaluation
• RLHF &  GRPO

Intro topic: Lego event space & retail store: https://www.instagram.com/bambeecave 

News/Links:

• StackOverflow Question Count Going Down 
  • https://gist.github.com/hopeseekr/f522e380e35745bd5bdc3269a9f0b132
• DeepSeek claims its ‘reasoning’ model beats OpenAI’s o1 on certain benchmarks
  • https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/20/deepseek-claims-its-reasoning-model-beats-openais-o1-on-certain-benchmarks/ 
• Computer Science Papers Every Developer Should Read
  • https://newsletter.techworld-with-milan.com/p/computer-science-papers-every-developer
• Nvidia Cosmos - an AI platform to change the future of robots and cars - wins Best of CES 2025
  • https://www.zdnet.com/article/nvidia-signs-largest-car-maker-toyota-to-use-its-self-driving-tech/ 

Book of the Show

• Patrick: Alice’s Adventures in a differentiable wonderland
  • https://www.sscardapane.it/alice-book/
• Jason: 
  • A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Hulu/Netflix/etc)

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • Digseum
    • https://store.steampowered.com/app/3361470/Digseum/
• Jason: 
  • Sqlitedict - Python dictionaries saved to disk

Topic: Project Planning and Management

• Why?
  • Gathering feedback
  • Identifying risks
  • Deciding future headcount
  • Documenting / discovering dependencies
  • Critical path
  • Schedule
  • Reduce the bullwhip effect
• How it works
  • SMART goals
    • specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound
    • MT is most important
  • Gantt Charts
  • Scrum
  • Agile
  • Kanban
• Tools
  • Whiteboard (the generic IRL one)
  • Post it notes
  • JIRA
  • Asana
  • OpenProject
• Dealing with uncertainty
  • Buffering
    • Issues with recursive padding
  • Project planning Post-Mortems

Intro topic: Smart homes

News/Links:

• SpaceX Starship Flight Test Five / Six
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIKI7y3DTXk
• ShareDB
  • https://github.com/share/sharedb
• Orion AR Glasses
  • https://about.fb.com/news/2024/09/introducing-orion-our-first-true-augmented-reality-glasses/
• Blade and Sorcery 1.0 is out
  • https://www.meta.com/experiences/blade-sorcery-nomad/2031826350263349/
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • The Book that Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence
    • https://amzn.to/4fry2XW
• Jason: 
  • Masters of Doom
    • https://amzn.to/3YxuD3c
      
      

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • Balatro
    • https://www.playbalatro.com/
• Jason: 
  • Cursor IDE
    • https://www.cursor.com/
      
      

Topic: Working from Home

• Intro
• Background & WFH experiences
• Is it Panacea?
  • Realizing it works better for some than others
  • Internally Motivated
• Scheduling
• Communications
• Home Setup
  • Dedicated space
  • Handling Non-work Distractions
  • Keyboards, Monitors, Music, … Desk related things
• The specter of RTO

Intro topic:  Buying a Car

News/Links:

• Cognitive Load is what Matters
  • https://github.com/zakirullin/cognitive-load
• Diffusion models are Real-Time Game Engines
  • https://gamengen.github.io/
• Your Company Needs Junior Devs
  • https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2024/09/07/your-team-needs-juniors
• Seamless Streaming / Fish Speech / LLaMA Omni
  • Seamless: https://huggingface.co/facebook/seamless-streaming
  • Fish: https://github.com/fishaudio/fish-speech 
  • LLaMA Omni: https://github.com/ictnlp/LLaMA-Omni 

Book of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • Thought Emporium Youtube
    • https://youtu.be/8X1_HEJk2Hw?si=T8EaHul-QMahyUvQ
• Jason: 
  • Novel Minds
    • https://www.novelminds.ai/
      
      

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • Escape Simulator
    • https://pinestudio.com/games/escape-simulator/
• Jason: 
  • Cursor IDE
    • https://www.cursor.com/
      
      

Topic: Vector Databases (~54 min)

• How computers represent data traditionally
  • ASCII values
  • RGB values
• How traditional compression works
  • Huffman encoding (tree structure)
  • Lossy example: Fourier Transform & store coefficients
• How embeddings are computed
  • Pairwise (contrastive) methods
  • Forward models (self-supervised)
• Similarity metrics
• Approximate Nearest Neighbors (ANN)
• Sub-Linear ANN
  • Clustering
  • Space Partitioning (e.g. K-D Trees)
• What a vector database does
  • Perform nearest-neighbors with many different similarity metrics
  • Store the vectors and the data structures to support sub-linear ANN
  • Handle updates, deletes, rebalancing/reclustering, backups/restores
• Examples
  • pgvector: a vector-database plugin for postgres
  • Weaviate, Pinecone 
  • Milvus

• James Morse: Software Engineer at Cisco
  • System Administrator to DevOps
  • Difference between DevOps and MLOps
  • Getting Started with DevOps
• Luke Marsden: CEO of Helix ML
  • How to start a business at 15 years old
  • BTRFS vs ZFS
  • MLOps: the intersection of software, DevOps and AI
  • Fine-tuning AI on the Cloud
  • Some advice for folks interested in ML Ops
• Yuval Fernbach: CTO MLOps & JFrog
  • Starting Qwak
  • Going from a jupyter notebook to production
  • ML Supply Chain
  • Getting started in Machine Learning
• Stephen Chin: VP of DevRel at Neo4J
  • Developer Relations: The Job
  • What is a Large Language Model?
  • Knowledge graphs and the Linkage Model
  • How to Use Graph databases in Enterprise
  • How to get into ML Ops

175: Resume Writing

Intro topic:  DSLR Photography vs Camera Phone

News/Links:

• Free Internet while flying by abusing edits to your profile name
  • https://robertheaton.com/pyskywifi/
• Making Animated Characters with AI Art
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSN76gb_Z28
• On 10x Engineers
  • https://stackoverflow.blog/2024/06/19/the-real-10x-developer-makes-their-whole-team-better/
• The Beauty and Challenges of AI-Generated Artistic Gymnastics
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwJIYj3hPAU
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu
    • https://amzn.to/3xNEoRB
• Jason: 
  • The Checklist Manifesto
    • https://amzn.to/3W2JjpM

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo Switch)
  • https://amzn.to/3S9VJLf
• Jason: 
  • Amazon Q
  • https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=AmazonWebServices.amazon-q-vscode
    
    

Topic: Resume Writing (Courtesy of Matthew C.)

• Why have a resume?
  • Many jobs require it to get into the consideration
  • Today many are screened for keywords automatically
  • Log for future you
• What is a resume?
  • One-page description
  • Key accomplishments & experiences
  • Comparison to CV
  • References
• How to write a good resume?
  • Do’s
    • Include your github if it has good contributions
    • Be specific (dates, locations, skills)
    • Isolate your specific contributions
    • Be accurate/honest
    • Be concise
    • Be ready to discuss any point you have on the resume
    • List hobbies/activities/extracurriculars
  • Don’ts
    • Have mistakes (especially dates)
    • Use images (most companies use text extraction)
    • Use it as a design portfolio
    • Put social qualities (e.gs. hard-working, motivated, friendly)
    • Use fancy templates/tools
  • Resources
    • Manager Tools: How to scan resumes https://www.manager-tools.com/2016/05/how-scan-resume-part-1 
    • Google docs
    • Latex/Lyx for CVs
• How to think about your career and how it impacts your future resume writing (career planning)
  • Technologies and architectures more than specifics of project details
  • How various choices may age over time

Intro topic:  Social Media Auto Responder LLM

News/Links:

• Amazon releases Amazon Q
  • https://press.aboutamazon.com/2024/4/aws-announces-general-availability-of-amazon-q-the-most-capable-generative-ai-powered-assistant-for-accelerating-software-development-and-leveraging-companies-internal-data
• Cheap RiscV “Super Cluster” from Bitluni
  • DIY 256-Core RISC-V super computer
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4d3PgEXhdY
  • CH32V203
• Phi 3 Vision Released
  • https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-models-added-to-the-phi-3-family-available-on-microsoft-azure/
  • Ollama
• ChatGPT 4o
  • https://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick: MyFirstMillion Podcast
  • https://www.mfmpod.com/
• Jason: A Path Towards Autonomous Machine Intelligence
  • https://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf

Patreon https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: Dave the Diver
  • https://store.steampowered.com/app/1868140/DAVE_THE_DIVER/
• Jason: Turing Complete
  • https://store.steampowered.com/app/1444480/Turing_Complete/ 

Topic: DevOps

• What is DevOps
  • DevOps vs SRE
• Why DevOps is important
  • Engineering time is expensive
  • Outages can hurt company metrics & reputation
• Build & Testing Infrastructure
  • Bazel & Build/Test Idempotency
  • Build/Test Farms
  • BuildBarn
  • Github Actions
  • Jenkins
• Infrastructure as code
  • Terraform
  • Blue Green Deployment
• Continuous Everything!
  • Continuous Integration
  • Continuous Deployment
• How to Measure DevOps
  • Build Times
  • Release cadence
  • Bug tracking / round trip times
  • Engineer Surveys
    • Time spent doing what you enjoy
• DevOps Horror Stories

173: Mocking and Unit Tests

Intro topic:  Headphones

News/Links:

• Texas A&M University Physics Festival
  • https://physicsfestival.tamu.edu/
• Rust vs Cpp at Google
  • Lars Bergstrom (Google Director of Engineering): Rust teams at Google are as productive as the ones using Go and 2x those using Cpp
  • https://youtu.be/6mZRWFQRvmw?t=27012
• Is Cosine Similarity Really About Similarity
  • https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05440
• Xz utils supply chain attack
  • Andres Freund at Microsoft
  • https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/04/what-we-know-about-the-xz-utils-backdoor-that-almost-infected-the-world/
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick:
  • 80/20 Running by Matt Fitzgerald
  • https://amzn.to/3xyEKLo
• Jason: 
  • A Movie Making Nerd
  • https://amzn.to/49ycDJj

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • Shapez Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playdigious.shapez&hl=en_US&gl=US
  • Shapez iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shapez-factory-game/id6450830779
• Jason: 
  • Dwarf Fortress
  • https://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/
    
    

Topic: Mocking and Unit Tests

• What are Unit Tests
  • Balance between utility, maintenance, and coverage
  • Unit Test: testing small functions
  • Regression Test: Testing larger functions
  • System Test: End-to-end testing of programs
• What are mocks & fakes
• When to use mock vs. fake
• Mocking libraries in various languages
  • Python: https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.mock.html
  • Java: https://github.com/mockito/mockito
  • C++:  https://github.com/google/googletest
    
    

172: Transformers and Large Language Models

Intro topic: Is WFH actually WFC?

News/Links:

• Falsehoods Junior Developers Believe about Becoming Senior
  • https://vadimkravcenko.com/shorts/falsehoods-junior-developers-believe-about-becoming-senior/
• Pure Pursuit
  • Tutorial with python code: https://wiki.purduesigbots.com/software/control-algorithms/basic-pure-pursuit 
  • Video example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYR7mmcwT2w 
• PID without a PHD
  • https://www.wescottdesign.com/articles/pid/pidWithoutAPhd.pdf
• Google releases Gemma
  • https://blog.google/technology/developers/gemma-open-models/
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick: The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan (Wheel of Time)
  • https://amzn.to/3uEhg6v
• Jason: How to Make a Video Game All By Yourself
  • https://amzn.to/3UZtP7b

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: Stadia Controller Wifi to Bluetooth Unlock
  • https://stadia.google.com/controller/index_en_US.html
• Jason: FUSE and SSHFS
  • https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-sshfs-to-mount-remote-file-systems-over-ssh
    
    

Topic: Transformers and Large Language Models

• How neural networks store information
  • Latent variables
• Transformers
  • Encoders & Decoders
• Attention Layers
  • History
    • RNN
      • Vanishing Gradient Problem
    • LSTM
      • Short term (gradient explodes), Long term (gradient vanishes)
  • Differentiable algebra
  • Key-Query-Value
  • Self Attention
• Self-Supervised Learning & Forward Models
• Human Feedback
  • Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback
  • Direct Policy Optimization (Pairwise Ranking)

Intro topic: Monitor setups

News/Links:

• BlueScuti, Willis, beats Tetris
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuJ5UuknsHU
• PalWorld accused of being an AI Product
  • https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/01/22/palworld-accused-of-using-genai-with-no-evidence-so-far/?sh=26a9651b4239
• 4 Billion if-statements to determine if a number is even or odd
  • https://andreasjhkarlsson.github.io/jekyll/update/2023/12/27/4-billion-if-statements.html
• Seamless M4T
  • https://ai.meta.com/blog/seamless-m4t/
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick:
  • Foundation by Isaac Asimov
    • https://amzn.to/3SrmgnP
• Jason: 
  • Propaganda by Edward Bernays
    • https://amzn.to/47JUCXJ

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • The Room Game
    • https://www.fireproofgames.com/games/the-room
• Jason:
  • Incredibuild
    • https://www.incredibuild.com/
      
      

Topic: Compilers and Interpreters (Request by Jessica W.)

• Machine Code
  • Architecture Specific
• Assembly
  • Single vs Two Pass Compiler
• High level Languages
  • Intermediate Representation
  • JVM ByteCode vs Machine Code for portability
• Scripting/Interpreters
• JIT
• Profile Guided Optimization
• Resources
  • https://www.craftinginterpreters.com/
  • https://nandgame.com/
  • Turing Complete

Predictions:
Jason 

• VR for Work
• Lowering AI training cost/ improved efficiency
• RISC-V takeoff

Patrick

• Ai claim of AGI
• Ai peer reviewer
• Ai Video Generator
• More space vehicles reaching orbit

Early career, finding role at FAANG, liaising vs shipping code. Startup?

3 part. 1. How and when current hype for AI will end? 2. Shape of the show 3. Upcoming in tech

What are essential programmer knowledge items?

CS Student, how to organize life and goals? What purpose life should serve?

What kind of programmer were you in college?

Happy Holidays!

Intro topic: Testing your car battery

News/Links:

• Tech Layoffs still going on
  • https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article/google-layoffs-california-companies-18465600.php 
• Real-time dreamy Cloudscapes with Volumetric Raymarching
  • https://blog.maximeheckel.com/posts/real-time-cloudscapes-with-volumetric-raymarching/
• Robot Rascals
  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Rascals 
• Meta Quest 3 
  • https://www.theverge.com/23906313/meta-quest-3-review-vr-mixed-reality-headset
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick:
  • HyperLogLog Paper
    • https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/40671.pdf 
• Jason: 
  • Eureka! NVIDIA Research Breakthrough Puts New Spin on Robot Learning 
    • https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2023/10/20/eureka-robotics-research/ 

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • Techtonica: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1457320/Techtonica/ 
• Jason:
  • ESP32 development board: https://amzn.to/3Qpmb20 
  • WEMOS

Topic: HyperLogLog

• Motivation
  • Cardinality Counting
• LinearCounting
  • Hash + expectation of collision based on how full
  • Bloom Filter
• LogLog
  • Use first N bits as bucket
  • Use max sequential 0s in each bucket
  • Average
• HyperLogLog
  • Handle empty buckets
  • Use correction factor like linear counting for low counts (number of empty buckets) and high counts
• Distributing
  • Transfer bucket counts

Intro topic: What are expectations on developers that have nothing to do with programming

News/Links:

• Pushing for a lower dev estimate is like negotiating weather with a Meteorologist
  • https://smartguess.is/blog/your-estimate-is-less-than-that/
• Announcing python in excel
  • https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/excel-blog/announcing-python-in-excel-combining-the-power-of-python-and-the/ba-p/3893439
• 7 Habits of Highly Effective Software Engineers
  • https://makingsmallercircles.com/articles/7-habits-of-highly-effective-software-engineers/
• Raspberry pi 5 begins shipping
  • https://www.phoronix.com/news/Raspberry-Pi-5-Shipping
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick:
  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone Illustrated Edition
    • https://amzn.to/3St3L35
• Jason: 
  • The Pete and Sebastian Show
    • https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-pete-and-sebastian-show/id570256898

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • Obsidian
    • obsidian.md
• Jason:
  • Ink by Inkle
    • https://github.com/inkle/ink
      
      

Topic: Godot

• What is a game engine?
  • Graphics, animation, particle effects
  • Tilemaps
  • Entity component systems
  • Physics
  • Sound
  • I/O
  • Input handling (touchscreen, joystick)
  • GDScript
• Why use a game engine?
  • Portability
  • Allow for testing individual components of the game
  • Libraries for ads, in-app-purchases
• Godot
  • Open source
  • Focused on 2-D but now many 3-D features
  • Great development environment
• AI Hero
  • Started in phaser (development rut)
  • Moved to Godot, rapid prototyping

Intro topic: Jogging Metrics

News/Links:

• Unholy LLM
  • https://huggingface.co/Undi95/Unholy-v1-12L-13B 
• The reverse red herring  
  • https://www.blameless.com/blog/the-reverse-red-herring
• The "ens–tification" of TikTok
  • https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ 
• Response letter to Godot is not the new Unity
  • https://sampruden.github.io/posts/godot-is-not-the-new-unity/
  • https://gist.github.com/reduz/cb05fe96079e46785f08a79ec3b0ef21
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick:
  • Math Games with Bad Drawings by Ben Orlin
  • https://amzn.to/48qlg9A
• Jason: 
  • The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates
  • https://amzn.to/3LChBff

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • Factorio (Desktop Game)
• Jason:
  • AI Hero (iOS and Android)

Topic: Desktop user interfaces

• What is a user interface?
• Web and Mobile UI toolkits
• Desktop options
  • Qt
    • Cross platform, custom UI elements
    • Qt creator, code generator
  • WxWidgets
    • Cross platform, uses native UI elements 
    • WxFormDesigner, code generation
    • Can look different on different operating systems
  • Electron
    • Local nodejs webserver
    • Html/JavaScript technology
    • Requires interprocess communication to use other languages  
  • Jupyter notebooks
    • Mathematica-like notebook 
    • Not for distribution 
  • Streamlit
    • Python to web compiler
  • Game Engines
    • Unity, Godot, Unreal
• Tips for building desktop UI
  • UI is slow (startup time, interaction time)
  • Separate the UI from the engine & business logic

- pganalyze: https://pganalyze.com/

- Weekly series "5mins of Postgres": https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDV_1Dz2Ixgl1nT_3DUZVFw

- How Postgres chooses which index to use: https://pganalyze.com/blog/how-postgres-chooses-index

- CMU databases courses: https://db.cs.cmu.edu/courses/

- Postgres community: https://www.postgresql.org/community/

As well as social links:

- Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@lukas

- Twitter/X: @pganalyze, @LukasFittl

- GitHub: @pganalyze, @lfittl

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lfittl/ , https://www.linkedin.com/company/pganalyze/

Intro topic: Revisiting the power of Spreadsheets

News/Links:

• LK-99 Isn’t a Superconductor
  • https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02585-7
• Normalizing Flows
  • https://pyro.ai/examples/normalizing_flows_i.html
• How is llama.cpp possible?
  • https://finbarr.ca/how-is-llama-cpp-possible/
• Chat with open source large language models
  • https://chat.lmsys.org/
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick: Math with Bad Drawings by Ben Orlin
  • https://amzn.to/44dsgDz
• Jason: 
  • Overboard! https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.InkleLtd.Overboard Nhl=en_US&gl=US 

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Patrick: 
  • ffmprovisr https://amiaopensource.github.io/ffmprovisr/
• Jason:
  • Pandas read_ods() read_excel()

Topic: Differential Equations

• Why should programmers learn about DiffEq
  • Law of Large Numbers
• What are differential equations?
  • When you know the rate of change
  • EigenVectors & EigenValues
  • What is Jacobian What is Jacobian? | The right way of thinking derivatives and integrals
    
    
• Special cases
  • Partial Differential Equations
  • Ordinary Differential Equations
• Why solvers are important
  • Numerical Stability at larger step sizes
  • Example: https://medium.com/@pukumarathe/eulers-method-and-runge-kutta-4th-order-method-in-python-b4a0068a8ebe 
• Fun Examples
  • Predator-Prey relationships in scipy
    • https://scientific-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/notebooks_rst/3_Ordinary_Differential_Equations/02_Examples/Lotka_Volterra_model.html 
  • Physics Engines for games
    • https://youtu.be/52n2qKgwW_Q 
  • PageRank
    • https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.08973.pdf 

Things to consider when choosing a database

• Speed & Latency
• Consistency, ACID Compliance
• Scalability
• Language support & Developer Experience
• Relational vs. Non-relational (SQL vs. NoSQL)
• Data types
• Security
• Database environment
  • Client vs Server access

Info on Kris & Harper:

• Website: harperdb.io
• Twitter: @harperdbio, @kriszyp
• Github: @HarperDB, @kriszyp

Episode 163 - Recursion

Intro topic: Electric Cars

News/Links:

• Snake Game in 101 Bytes in a QR Code
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/15ab4ct/my_qr_code_snake_game_is_now_only_101_bytes/
• Superconductor Rumors abound
  • https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/whats-going-on-with-the-reports-of-a-room-temperature-superconductor/
• OpenWorm
  • https://github.com/openworm/OpenWorm
• Creator of vim passes away
  • https://news.itsfoss.com/vim-creator-passed-away/
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick:
  • Little Book of Common Sense Investing by Jack Bogle https://amzn.to/43YqANR
• Jason: 
  • Mistborn Saga: https://amzn.to/3DJkUN8

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show

• Jason:
  • reMarkable https://remarkable.com/
• Patrick: 
  • Stellarium (iOS and Android)

Topic: Recursion

• What is it
  • Divide-And-Conquer
  • Fibonacci numbers
• How to (not) teach recursion
• Practical Applications
  • Graph operations
    • Tree retrieval, balancing
    • Graph Search
  • Spatial partitioning
• Pitfalls
  • Stack size
• How to solve problems with recursion
  • (1) Consider the base cases
  • (2) Build the recursive step
  • (3) Look for ways the recursion will not terminate and fix
  • (4) (rest are optional) Remove global contexts
  • (5) Add memoization
  • (6) Build solutions incrementally