CoRecursive

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  Inside Shopify's Layoffs

  • Dec 02, 24
  • 42 min

  What if you had to break life-changing news to your team—could you handle the weight of their futures?

  Allison’s journey from software engineer to compassionate leader at Shopify is filled with challenges and growth. It all started when her mentor was suddenly laid off, leaving her with uncertainty and guilt. This turning point taught her... more..

• ReiserFS

  • Nov 04, 24
  • 52 min

  Have you ever known someone whose technical brilliance was overshadowed by personal failings? This is the story of Hans Reiser, a software developer driven to create a superior Linux filesystem, but whose difficult personality got in the way.

  Then came the disappearance of his wife, Nina, in 2006. The investigation pointed to Reiser, ending with... more..

• From Everest to Startups

  • Oct 02, 24
  • 50 min

  How do you know what matters? What goals are worth pursing? What if training to climb Everest left you certain you were on the wrong career path?

  Yoshio’s journey starts with disappointment in his academic path. Unsatisfied and aimless, he decides to climb Mount Everest, inspired by a childhood experience. This marks the beginning of... more..

• From Code to Capital

  • Sep 02, 24
  • 46 min

  What if your corporate job left you feeling empty, and you decided to leap into venture capital?

  Tim Chen, a software engineer, was disillusioned with corporate life at Microsoft. The 2008 market crash and layoffs deepened his dissatisfaction. Seeking more impactful work, Tim joined startups and contributed to open-source projects, like Kafka and Docker.

  Then... more..

• Navigating Corporate Giants

  • Jul 04, 24
  • 49 min

  What if you had to fight against your company’s culture to bring a revolutionary tool to life? Meet Jeffrey Snover, the Microsoft architect behind PowerShell, a command tool that transformed Windows system administration. Initially met with skepticism, Snover’s idea faced resistance from a company that favored graphical interfaces.

  Snover’s journey began with a simple mission:... more..

• From Burnout to Breakthrough

  • Jun 04, 24
  • 52 min

  Can you imagine risking your career to making coding easier to learn?

  Meet Felienne Hermans, a professor who did just that by stepping beyond academia to redefine coding education. Disillusioned by her research’s limited impact, Felienne discovered a new calling in teaching coding to underserved students. Her journey led to the creation of Hedy, a... more..

Favorites:

• From Project Management to Data Compression Innovator

  • May 02, 23
  • 59 min

  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... more..

• Shipping Graphing Calculator

  • Feb 02, 23
  • 46 min

  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?... more..

• From Prison To Programming

  • Sep 02, 22
  • 46 min

  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... more..

• The History and Mystery Of Eliza

  • Jul 05, 22
  • 44 min

  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... more..

• The Untold Story of SQLite

  • Jul 02, 21
  • 38 min

  On today’s show, I’m talking to Richard Hipp about surviving becoming core infrastructure for the world. SQLite is everywhere. It’s in your web browser, it’s in your phone, it’s probably in your car, and it’s definitely in commercial planes. It’s where your iMessages and WhatsApp messages are stored, and if you do a find on... more..

• Software That Doesn't Suck

  • Jul 01, 20
  • 37 min

  Software is just the tool and it should get out of your way. In this episode, Jim discusses how to build a great developer tool. It all started with: “What’s the worst software that you use every day?” and led to the creation of Subversion.

  more..
• Apple 2001

  • Apr 03, 21
  • 48 min

  David Shayer worked at Apple for 14 years, and he has a wild experience to share. Apple has a unique culture, and David will give us an insider view of what it was like for him at Apple during the 2000s, roughly between 2001 to 2015 when Apple transformed into the powerhouse that it is... more..

• Video Game Programming From Scratch

  • Mar 01, 21
  • 41 min

  I’m not really a big gamer, but lately, I’ve fallen down this rabbit hole into the world of Casey Muratori, and this project that he started on Twitch in 2014. He is building a video game from scratch and explaining it all as he goes along.

  Casey is a professional video game and game engine,... more..

• The Birth of UNIX

  • Nov 01, 20
  • 51 min

  When you work on your computer, there are so many things you take for granted: operating systems, programming languages, they all have to come from somewhere.

  In the late 1960s and 1970s, that somewhere was Bell Labs, and the operating system they were building was UNIX.

  They were building more than just an operating system... more..

• We're Teaching Functional Programming Wrong

  • Aug 03, 20
  • 46 min

  Today Richard Feldman shares his story of going from javascript developer to elm developer to functional programming teacher.

  Along the way, Richard finds that people are teaching functional programming wrong. We are teaching it in a way that misses how most industrial software engineers learn best.

  Richard also delves into Elm, his approach, and how... more..

• Memento Mori

  • Sep 01, 20
  • 40 min

  Preparing our minds for the inevitable is hard. But, after facing terminal cancer, Kate Gregory recalled that facing death has many lessons to teach us.

  In this episode,  Kate will share the lessons she learned and explain how you can apply them to your career as a software developer and live a remarkable life.

  more..
• JSON vs XML

  • Apr 03, 23
  • 49 min

  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... more..

• Platform Takes The Pain

  • Nov 02, 23
  • 48 min

  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... more..

Best Episodes

Chats:

• CPAN

  • Aug 01, 22
  • 56 min

  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.

  And why does this matter? Who is still using PERL anyhow? CPAN inspired everything that would follow: npm, maven, cargo, nuget, hackage, ruby gems, python pypi and so... more..

• Why still 80 columns?

  • Jun 01, 22
  • 39 min

  On June 1st, 2014, the following question showed up on hacker news:

  Why is 80 characters, the standard limit for code width. Why 80?

  Why not? 79 or 81 or even a hundred.

  So you probably know what happens next. People started to post their opinions and the comments and other people started... more..

• April Fools' Is Cancelled (2014)

  • Apr 01, 22
  • 38 min

  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... more..

• The Internet Is Made of Duct Tape

  • Jan 02, 22
  • 42 min

  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.

  I’m super pumped about this because, sometimes, I learn something new, and I’m excited about it. And I want to tell people about it. And so today is a... more..

• Quines, Polyglot Code and Other Fun Computations

  • Sep 02, 21
  • 61 min

  Today, previous guest and my neighbor Don Mckay and I will discuss items from the endless fascinating Cursed Computer Iceberg Meme. The Iceberg is a giant list of “the peculiarities and weirdness of computers.”

  We each a select few items from the list and alternate explaining it to each other. Don’s choices are varied,... more..

Classics:

• Language Oriented Design

  • Oct 01, 19
  • 56 min

  Adam talks to Hal Abelson about the textbook he coauthored in 1985, The Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs and why it is still popular and influential today.

  more..
• Software That Doesn't Suck

  • Jul 01, 20
  • 37 min

  Software is just the tool and it should get out of your way. In this episode, Jim discusses how to build a great developer tool. It all started with: “What’s the worst software that you use every day?” and led to the creation of Subversion.

  more..
• Reinforcement Learning At Facebook

  • Feb 01, 21
  • 38 min

  If you ever wanted to learn about machine learning you could do worse than have Jason Gauci teach you. Jason has worked on YouTube recommendations. He was an early contributor to TensorFlow the open-source machine learning platform. His thesis work was cited by DeepMind.

  But what I find so fascinating with Jason is he recognized... more..

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What Listeners Think

Karl Fogel *

The consistently best podcast I listen to is CoRecursive Podcast with Adam Gordon Bell. So far, every single episode I've heard has been excellent: engaging, informative, sometimes provocative, always well-produced. He chooses good guests and draws the best out of them!

Chris Krycho *

I’ve really, really been enjoying @adamgbell’s @corecursive podcast – solid and informative interviews on interesting topics in programming ...

Ankush Thakur *

I'd describe CoRecrusive as different, exotic, sublime, serious, or some such combination. Yes, it's about software development and software development only, but it digs underneath until the very foundations are exposed. And when an episode is not on technical details, it's on ideas and themes that are mind-blowing and unseen anywhere else.

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Featured Guests

Daniel Lemire

Brian Kernighan

Matt Godbolt

Kate Gregory

Richard Feldman

Jim Blandy

Sean T Allen

Krystal Maughan

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