Future of Coding Future of Coding

Inventing on PrincipleStop Drawing Dead FishThe Future of Programming

Yes, all three of them in one episode. Phew!

Links

$ patreon.com/futureofcoding — Lu and Jimmy recorded an episode about Hest without telling me, and by total coincidence released it on my birthday. Those jerks… make me so happy.


Lu's talk at SPLASH 2023: Cellpond: Spatial Programming Without Escape
Gary Bernhardt's talk Wat
Inventing on Principle by Bret Victor ("""Clean""" Audio)
Braid, the good video game from the creator of The Witness
David Hellman is the visual artist behind Braid, A Lesson Is Learned but the Damage Is Irreversible, Dynamicland, and… the Braid section of Inventing on Principle.
Light Table by Chris Granger
Learnable Programming by Bret Victor
When Lu says "It's The Line", they're referring to this thing they're working on called Seet (or "see it"), and you can sneak a peek at seet right heet.
Paris Fashion Week absolutely struts, and so can you!
The Canadian Tuxedo. As the representative of Canada, I can confirm that I own both a denim jacket and denim pants. If you see me at a conference wearing this combo, I will give you a hug.
Jimmy runs a personal Lichess data lake.
Hot Module Replacement is a good thing.
Pygmalion has a lot of juicy silly bits, 'parently.
Cuttle is awesome! It's a worthy successor to Apparatus. Toby Schachman, Forrest Oliphant, I think maybe a few other folks too? Crushing it. Oh, and don't miss Toby's episode of this very podcast!
Recursive Drawing, another Toby Schachman joint.
Screens in Screens in Screens, another Lu Wilson joint.
Larry Tesler. Not a fan of modes.
Lu writes about No Ideas on their blog, which is actually just a wiki, but it's actually a blog, but it's actually just a garden.
When we mention Rich Hickey, we're referring to the talk Simple Made Easy
Jacob Collier, ugh.
Suffragettes, women advocating for their right to vote, absolutely had a principle. Not sure that we should be directly likening their struggle to what we do in tech. On the other hand, it's good to foster positive movements, to resist incel and other hateful ones.
Instead of linking to e/ anything, I'm just gonna link to BLTC for reasons that only make sense to longtime listeners.
Stop Writing Dead Programs by Jack Rusher. Jack Rusher? Jack Rusher!
It's the fish one, the one with the fish. …Sorry, these aren't actually fish, or something, because they're just drawings.
René Magritte is the creator behind La Trahison des Images, origin of "Ceci n'est pas une pipe". Or maybe it was Margit the Fell Omen?
Magritte's Words and Images are lovely. Here's an English translation, though its worth taking a look at the original in context.
Acousmatic Music
Lu has made art with behaviour — various sands, and CellPond, say.
Barnaby Dixon? Barnaby Dixon. Barnaby Dixon! Barnaby Dixon!!
You can listen to part of Ivan's """Metronome""", if you want. Or you can listen to an early version of the song he's using this metronome to write. Or you can hear snippets of it in the Torn Leaf Zero video (especially the ending). But, like, you could also go make yourself lunch. I recommend mixing up a spicy peanut sauce for your roasted carrots. Shred a bit of cheese, tomato. Toast the bread. Pull the sausages right when the oil starts to spit. Put them straight into the compost. Look at the bottom of the compost bucket. What's down there? It's shiny. Why are you reading this? Why am I writing this? Why do we make thispodcast?
Wintergatan — Marble Machine exists
Oh, I forgot to add a link to Arroost earlier. You can also watch a pretty good video that is basically an Arroost tutorial, not much to it. There are also some nice examples of things people have made with Arroost.
The Rain Room looks pretty cool. It's the exact inverse of how rain works in many video games. YOU MUST PLAY RAIN WORLD.
Here's a beautiful demo of a microtonal guitar, and speaking of using complex machines to make music that would be "easier" to make with a compu

Dave Ackley's paper Beyond Efficiency is three pages long. With just these three pages, he mounts a compelling argument against the conventional way we engineer software. Instead of inflexibly insisting upon correctness, maybe allow a lil slop? Instead of chasing peak performance with cache and clever tricks, maybe measure many times before you cut. So in this episode, we're putting every CEO in the guillotine… (oh, that stands for "correctness and efficiency only", don't put us on a list)… and considering when, where, and how to do the robust thing.

Links

$ patreon.com/futureofcoding — The most recent bonus episode is a discussion with Stefan Lesser about new "laws of physics" we can invent inside the computer.

Don't destroy the earth, then make sure your thing can't be destroyed, then don't destroy your data, and finally, do your damn job, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.


A Software Epiphany, and the accompanying HN discussion — giga viral, so sick
PartyKit? Nice!
What started as a simple todo list turned into an ocean of tech boy milk and, ultimately, the AI apocalypse.
Jepsen is a rough, rugged, deeply thoughtful and fantastically cool approach to distributed systems testing, by Kyle Kingsbury. Also, we didn't talk about it, but his reversing / hexing / typing / rewriting / unifying technical interview series is essential reading.
Ivan's examples of robustness vs efficiency were RAID, the CAP theorem, Automerge, the engineering of FoundationDB, and Byzantine fault tolerance— all of which stake out interesting territory in the efficiency/robustness tradeoff spectrum, all of which are about distributed systems.
Can programming be liberated from the von Neumann style?, a paper by John Backus.
We Don't Really Know How to Compute!, a talk by Gerald Sussman.
The Robust-First Computing Creed is rock solid.
The Wikipedia article on von Neumann architecture did not come through with the goods.
Ivan works with Alex Warth now, and thus may fairly speak in half-truths like "I've been working with constraints recently…"
The Demon Hoard Sort
Bogosort is never coming to Dreamberd
The Witness was made by Jonathan Blow, who has Aphantasia, but he also made a game called Braid, and Braid is good.
Datamosh is a creative misuse of the lack of robustness that comes from storing diffs instead of full state snapshots. Here's a lovely gallery of examples.
Abstraction by xkcd
Reverse Engineering the source code of the BioNTech/Pfizer SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine
Can't let Lu get through the above without derailing onto Fiverr, PCP, Fight Club, and the Dust Brothers.
Randy Newman was nearly quoted in Ackley's Indefinite Scalability for Living Computation — god help you if you read our show notes and don't listen to the episode.
"It is difficult", says Upton Sinclair when asked about Jimmy Miller being Jimmy Miller, and how we all ought to approach our own sense of Jimmy Miller.

Music featured in this episode:


Hawker News by user: spiralganglion
Corporate World by the Dust Brothers

No more jokes! Find us at these normal places:


Ivan: Mastodon • Website
Jimmy: Mastodon • Website
Lu: Mastodon • Website
Dave: Mastodon • Website

Send us email, share your ideas in our Slack, and support the show on Patreon. Yes, do all three please.

http://futureofcoding.org/episodes/70
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the spirit of clearly communicating what you're signing up for, this podcast episode is nearly three hours long, and among other things it contains a discussion of a paper by author Mary Shaw titled Myths & Mythconceptions which takes as an organizing principle a collection of myths that are widely believed by programmers, largely unacknowledged, which shape our views on the nature of programming as an activity and the needs of programmers as people and the sort of work that we do as a sort of work, and where by acknowledging these myths the three of us (Mary Shaw primarily, and by extension Jimmy and I, those three people, that's it, no other people appear on this podcast) are able to more vividly grip the image of programming with our mind's eye (or somesuch) and conceive of a different formulation for programming, and in addition to these myths this paper also incudes a number of excellent lists that I take great pleasure in reading, beyond which I should also note that the paper does a job of explaining itself and that hopefully you'll find I've done a similar job, that's the spirit, please enjoy.

Links

$ patreon.com/futureofcoding — I've recently changed it so that there's only 1 instance of the INTERCAL tier available, so if you're interested in those perks you'd better hop on it quick before nobody else does!


There's also a video, though I haven't watched it.
Claude Shannon would have something to say about revealing information.
Top 10 Hits of the End of the World is an album by Prince Rama. Listen to it as loudly as you can on Bandcamp, Spotify, or Apple Music.
Val Town is the new startup by Future of Coding community founder Steve Krouse
Ivan recently took a job at Ink & Switch on the "Ink" research track.
Programmer Bums, or, rather, Computer Bums
Limmy's Wa
Retool
MythBusters
The Flop House's Final Judgements: Good-Bad, Bad-Bad, Kinda-Like
CRDT
Data
Robust-First Computing is an approach championed by the hero Dave Ackley, and I have a well-informed hunch that you'll be hearing a lot more about it in future episodes.
The T2 Tile Project is another Ackley joint that, perhaps, works as a wild example of what Mary Shaw means when she talks about an "execution ecosystem".
Devine's talk at Strange Loop: An approach to computing and sustainability inspired from permaculture
MUMPS (the medical thing, not to be confused with mumps the medical thing) is used by Epic (the software company, not to be confused with Epic the software company).
The Glass Cannon podcast network.
Lu's SPLASH talk Cellpond: Spatial Programming without Escape
The Turing tarpit
Functional Programming with Bananas, Lenses, Envelopes and Barbed Wire by Erik Meijer, Maarten Fokkinga, Ross Paterson.
Richard D. James is the same person as Richard P. (Peter) Gabriel, right?
Similarly, see Neil Armstrong's work on Erlang (which is popular in telephony, right?).
The Witness is not going to appear in our show notes.
Jack Rusher. Jack Rusher? Jack Rusher!
TrainJam
Gary Bernhardt's talk Ideology

Nobody remarked on these silly links last time, so this time I'm drawing more attention to them:


Tode: Neopets • MySpace
Berd: Angelfire • Orkut
Bot: Geocities • Friendster

https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/069
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The subject of this episode's paper — Propositions as Types by Philip Wadler — is one of those grand ideas that makes you want to go stargazing. To stare out into space and just disassociate from your body and become one with the heavens. Everything — life, space, time, existence — all of it is a joke! A cosmic ribbing delivered by the laws of the universe or some higher power or, perhaps, higher order. Humanity waited two thousand years, from the time of the ancient Greeks through until the 1930s, for a means to answer questions of calculability, when three suddenly arrived all at once:


General recursive functions by Gödel in 1934, with functions of sets of natural numbers.
Lambda calculus by Alonzo Church in 1936, with anonymous single-variable functions.
Turing machines by Alan Turing in 1937, with a process for evaluating symbols on a tape.

Then it was discovered that these three models of computation were, in fact, perfectly equivalent. That any statement made in one could be made in the others. A striking coincidence, sure, but not without precedent. But then it was quietly determined (in 1934, again in 1969, and finally published in 1980) that computation itself is in a direct correspondence with logic. That every proposition in a given logic corresponds with a type in a given programming language, every proof corresponds with a program, and the simplification of the proof corresponds with the evaluation of the program.

The implications boggle the mind. How could this be so? Well, how could it be any other way? Why did it take so long to discover? What other discoveries like this are perched on the precipice of revelation?

Philip Wadler is here to walk us through this bit of history, suggest answers to some of these questions, and point us in a direction to search for more.

And we are here, dear listener, to level with you that a lot of this stuff is miserably hard to approach, presented with the symbols and language of formal logic that is so often inscrutable to outsiders. By walking you through Wadler's paper (and the much more approachable Strange Loop talk), and tying it in with the cultural context of modern functional programming, we hope you'll gain an appreciation for this remarkable, divine pun that sits beneath all of computation.

Links

=> patreon.com/futureofcoding — but only if you back the Visual Programming tier!! I'm warning you!


Wadler's Strange Loop talk Propositions as Types
Cocoon is good. It's not, like, Inside or Limbo good, but it's good. Actually, just play Inside. Do that ASAP.
Hollow Knight, also extremely good. Can't wait for Silksong. But seriously, if you're reading this and have haven't played Inside, just skip this episode of the podcast and go play Inside. It's like 3 hours long and it's, like, transformatively great.
Chris Martens has done some cool work (eg) bringing together linear logic and games.
Meh: Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
Yeh: Infinity and the Mind by Rudy Rucker
Heh: To Mock a MockingBird by Raymond Smullyan.
The hierarchy of automata
Games: Agency as Art
The Incredible Proof Machine is what some would call a "visual programming language" because proofs are programs. But it's actually really cool and fun to play with. Approach it like a puzzle game, and give it 10 minutes or so to get its hooks into you.
"Stop Doing Logic" is part of the Stop Doing Math meme. Unrelated: Ivan's song Don't Do Math.
Bidirectional Type Checking, a talk by David Christiansen
List Out of Lambda, a blog post by Steve Losh

Nobody noticed that these links were silly last time, so this time I'm drawing more attention to it:


Ivan: Mastodon • Email
Jimmy: Mastodon • Twitter

This link is legit:


DM us in the FoC Slack

https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/068
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Go To Statement Considered Harmful is a solid classic entry in the X Considered Harmful metafiction genre, authored by renowned computer scientist and idiosyncratic grump, Edsger Wybe Dijkstra. Surprisingly (given the impact it's had) this is a minuscule speck of a paper, lasting only 1-ish pages, and it even digresses several times from the main point. Fear not! Jimmy and I spend the entirety of these two podcast hours thoroughly analyzing the paper, wringing every last drop of insight from it, speaking directly to how programming ought to be reimagined from the molten venture capital core on up. Yes indeed, this is another episode in the fine tradition of Future of Coding where we stay faithfully close to the text, we leave the second-order implications alone, and there's nothing more than that. Nothing portended, nothing changed.

Links

=> patreon.com/futureofcoding


Hest, which Jimmy is convinced that I refuse to call by name, or even talk about. He's clearly mistaken — and yet, I feel his philosophical force on my hand even now. Conundrum considered harmful.
"All Cretans are liars" doesn't have quite the ring of "dipping their breasts into the ripper", and is considered harmful.
Dijkstra's The Humble Programmer considered harmful.
Hoare's The Emperor's Old Clothes considered harmful.
Letter O Considered Harmful considered harmful.
“Considered Harmful” Essays Considered Harmful considered harmful! Scolds!
James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher considered considered considered considered considered considered considered considered harmful.
Proximity to Chomsky considered harmful.
Interlisp, an early lisp featuring the ] super paren, considered harmful.
The opening segment of the "I Want to Half-Believe" episode of Very Bad Wizards considered harmful.
The Witness considered harmful to our show notes.
Delimited Continuations considered harmful.
Notation as a Tool of Thought by "Kenneth E. Iverson considered harmful."
The Zen of Python considered a great honking idea.
Chunky Bacon considered harmful.
Copilot considered harmful.
Charles Babbage's Bridgewater Treatises considered harmful.
North & Whitehead's Principia Mathematica considered harmful.
The Sailor's Chorus from Wagner's The Flying Dutchman considered harmful.
PEP 8 considered harmful.
There are dozens of us considered harmful.
TC39 actually considered harmful.
Bifunctors considered harmful.
Chocolate
Radiolab considered one of the only good radio shows, because it's pushing hard against the norms of its medium.
UBI — consider it!
Forking The Queen considered harmful.
The Semantics of Graphical Languages, the paper about a visual formalism for visual programs, considered harmful.

Music featured in this episode:


Lemon
Wagner
Lu, Devine, William, Alex and Alex, Justin, Marcel, Peter, Matt, Blaine, Kevin, Nicki, Mae, Kate, Steve, Mitja, Philippa, Max, and everyone else who secretly said it like a swearword.

Get in touch, ask questions, don't ask questions:


Ivan: Mastodon • Email
Jimmy: Mastodon • Twitter
DM us in the FoC Slack
Support the show on Patreon

https://futureofcoding.org/episodes/067
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This community is a big tent. We welcome folks from all backgrounds, and all levels of experience with computers. Heck, on our last episode, we celebrated an article written by someone who is, rounding down, a lawyer! A constant question I ponder is: what's the best way to introduce someone to the world of FoC? If someone is a workaday programmer, or a non-programmer, what can we share with them to help them understand our area of interest?

A personal favourite is the New Media Reader, but it's long and dense. An obvious crowd-pleaser is Inventing on Principle.

Bonnie Nardi's A Small Matter of Programming deserves a place on the list, especially if the reader is already an avid programmer who doesn't yet understand the point of end-user programming. They might ask, "Why should typical computer users bother learning to program?" Well, that's the wrong question! Instead, we should start broader. Why do we use computers? What do we use them to do? What happens when they don't do what we want? Who controls what they do? Will this ever change? What change do we want? Nardi challenges us to explore these questions, and gives the reader a gentle but definitive push in a positive direction.

Next time, we're… considered harmful?

#### $

We have launched a Patreon!

=> patreon.com/futureofcoding

If, with the warmth in your heart and the wind in your wallet, you so choose to support this show then please know that we are tremendously grateful.

Producing this show takes a minor mountain of effort, and while the countless throngs of adoring fair-weather fans will surely arrive eventually, the small kilo-cadre of diehard listeners we've accrued so far makes each new episode a true joy to share. Through thick and thin (mostly thin since the sponsorship landscape turned barren) we're going to keep doing our darnedest to make something thought-provoking with an independent spirit. If that tickles you pink, throw some wood in our fireplace! (Yes, Ivan is writing this, how can you tell?)

Also, it doesn't hurt that the 2nd bonus episode — "Inherently Spatial" — is one of the best episodes of the show yet. It defrags so hard; you'll love it.

#### Init


Bug report: Frog Fractions. Oh the indignity!
Hey, it's The Witness in our show notes again.
Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy is the better game, even if it spawned Only Up and other copycats that miss the point. The Looker gets the point.
Getting Over It is a triumph that emerged from a genre of games that are hard to play: Octodad, QWOP, I Am Bread
Braid arguably spawned the genre of high-minded & heady puzzlers that all try to say something profound through their design.
Cookie Clicker and Universal Paperclips are good incremental games.
Jump King and Only Up are intentionally bad. Flappy Bird was accidentally good. Surgeon Simulator and Goat Simulator are purely for the laughs. Stanley Parable, like Getting Over It, brings in the voice of the creator to (say) invite rumination on the fourth wall, which is what make them transcendent.
Here's the trailer for Bennett Foddy's new game, Baby Steps.
So on the one hand we have all these "bad" and """bad""" and sometimes badgames, which actually end up doing quite well in advancing the culture. On the other hand we have The Witness, The Talos Principal, Swapper, Antichamber, QUBE, and all these high-minded puzzly games, which despite their best efforts to say something through their design… kinda don't.
When comparing the "interactivity" of these games, it's tempting to talk about the mechanics (or dynamics), but that formal definition feels a little too precise. We mean something looser — something closer to the colloquial meaning when "Gamers" talk about "game mechanics".
Silent Football might be an example of "sports as art". Mao is a card game where explaining the rules is forbidden.

#### Main


The Partially Examined Life is one of Jimmy's favourite philosophy podcasts.
Two essays from Scientific American's 1991 Special