Intro topic: Asymmetric Returns

News/Links:

• NanoChat by Andrej Karpathy
  • https://github.com/karpathy/nanochat
• Pydantic AI
  • https://www.marktechpost.com/2025/03/25/pydanticai-advancing-generative-ai-agent-development-through-intelligent-framework-design/
• 1000th Starlink this year
  • https://spaceflightnow.com/2025/05/16/live-coverage-spacex-plans-morning-launch-of-starlink-satellites-from-california/
• ChatGPT Apps SDK
  • https://openai.com/index/introducing-apps-in-chatgpt/
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick
  • The Will of the Many by James Islington
    • https://amzn.to/43IfU8Q
• Jason
  • Interview with DHH (Founder of Ruby on Rails)
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vagyIcmIGOQ
      
      

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

Tool of the Show

• Patrick
  • Factorio
    • https://www.factorio.com/
• Jason
  • nip.io

Topic: Workflow Orchestrators

• Why
  • Batch jobs (embarrassingly parallel)
  • Long-running tasks (e.g. transcoding video)
  • Checkpointing/resuming
• How
  • Message Queues
  • Containerization
  • Worker Pools & Autoscaling
  • History & Backfill
• Steps to run workflows:
  • Containerize the workflow definition and send to the cloud
  • Containerize all the individual tasks
  • Submit job(s)
• Examples
  • Airflow
    • Legacy but dominant
  • Dagster
    • Great UX for python developers
  • Temporal: https://temporal.io/
    • The new hotness
  • Ray
    • Low-level but very powerful
  • Kubeflow
    • Designed for ML workflows, integrated dashboard

184: Asynchronous Programming

Intro topic: AI Scams

News/Links:

• Coding Adventure: Ray-Tracing Glass and Caustics (Sebastian Lague)
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA1KVZ1eOuA
• Boson AI announces Higgs Audio V2
  • https://www.boson.ai/technologies/voice
• The Misconception that Almost Stopped AI [How Models Learn Part 1] (Welch Labs)
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrO20Jb-hy0
• A mind-bending conversation with Peter Thiel
  • https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/podcasts/interesting-times-a-mind-bending-conversation-with-peter-thiel.html
    
    

Book of the Show

• Patrick
  • The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)
    • https://amzn.to/4mevuzE
• Jason
  • NYT Word Games

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

Tool of the Show

• Patrick
  • Escape Academy
    • https://escapeacademygame.com/en
• Jason
  • Multi-modal LLMs to make calendar meetings
    • www.chatgpt.com
      
      

Topic: Asynchronous Computing

• What/Why
  • Multi-threading in between the lines
  • Many of the benefits of multiprocessing without the overhead/complexity
• How
  • Coroutines
  • Thread-Local Memory
  • Blocking vs Non-Blocking operations
    • Blocking: arithmetic
    • Non-Blocking: Reading from the network card into thread-local memory
  • Interpreter locking
    • Typescript: Single threaded
    • Python: GIL
• Implementations
  • Polling (not-Asynchronous)
  • Callbacks (interrupts)
  • Multithreading (with queues/message passing)
  • Promise/Futures
  • Async/Await

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:58 Introducing Mark Cunningham
00:07:01 How Do You Find A Job?
00:15:43 How to Get the Best Interview
00:33:06 Tips on How To Pass An Interview
00:38:38 How to Have a Good Interview
00:48:12 What is the Reverse Interview?
00:54:24 What Is The Hiring Manager's Role?
00:57:12 Reverse Interviews: Red Flags
01:14:45 How to Negotiate a Tech Offer
01:23:02 When to Negotiate Your Compensation
01:35:21 Interview Horror Stories
01:39:29 How Do You Deal With Fake AI Applicants?
01:45:32 The Bidding Network

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