Developer Voices

In this discussion with Peter Saxton, an expert in programming languages and abstract syntax trees (AST), listeners discover how the EYG language redefines programming. Peter explains the significance of focusing on ASTs rather than traditional syntax. He delves into balancing functional purity with practicality in EYG's design, explores type systems and row types, and highlights the ease of building interpreters with AST. The conversation also touches on innovative tools like Gleam for rapid prototyping, showcasing the dynamic future of programming languages.

Simon Aubury and Ned Letcher delve into the practical applications of DuckDB, a powerful data-handling tool. They discuss its ability to effortlessly read various formats, automate schema inference, and run efficiently across platforms. The duo covers the differences between transactional and analytical databases and the importance of data contracts. They also highlight DuckDB's extensibility through community-driven extensions and the integration with R for enhanced analytics, all while sharing insights from co-authoring their new book on DuckDB.

Justin Halsall, an expert in browser sessions, discusses the challenges of implementing RRWeb in capturing all DOM events, supporting canvas tags, and maintaining reliability. He explores the benefits of recording and replaying browser sessions for debugging, user journey analysis, and demo videos. The conversation delves into resolving browser-specific glitches, exotic HTML5 tags, internal data formats, and the practicality of the tool in practice.

Loris Cro from the ZigLang team discusses how Zig can compile C across different architectures, benefiting languages like Python and Rust. They explore improving build processes, dependencies, and Python as an interface to C libraries. Zig's role as a multi-OS build system and its interoperability with C are highlighted, along with creating a static Python interpreter with Zig and using Zig for static site generation.

José Valim, Creator of Elixir, discusses the history and design choices of Elixir, including syntax evolution and handling polymorphism. He explores Elixir's compilation, differences from Erlang, and the implementation of gradual typing. The podcast touches on the future of coding systems and the capabilities of Elixir in various domains.

David Hewitt, the principal committer to PyO3, shares insights into Python and Rust integration. Topics include bridging Rust and Python, exploring lifetimes in Rust, smart pointers, error handling, traits comparison, resource handling, and bringing Rust's power to the Python world.

Jeremy Saenz explores NATS, a versatile message-passing system that defies messaging norms. Topics include NATS vs. Kafka, IoT benefits, CLI features, data integrity, microservices communication, and new tech like Ballerina Lang.

Juan Vuletich discusses Smalltalk's history, Cuis's unique implementation, and the future of computing. Topics include object-oriented programming, message passing, blurring OS and language, visionary ideas, empowerment through computing, iPad evolution, Smalltalk's features, VM optimization, community collaboration, and experiments with Git in Cuis Smalltalk.

This week we take a close look at the language Inko from two perspectives: The language design features that make it special, and the realities of being a language developer.Yorick Peterse joins us to discuss why he’s building Inko, and which design sweetspots he’s looking for. We begin with memory management, aiming for the kind of developer who wants control, but without the complexities of Rust. Then we look at the designing for concurrency with typed channels, and handling exceptions by removing them and leaning heavily into ADTs and pattern matching.Mixed in with all that is a discussion on the realities of being a programming language developer. How do you figure out how to implement your ideas? What tradeoffs do you make and what kind of programmer do you want to be most useful to? How do you teach people new ideas in programming, and how “different” can you make a language before it feels weird? And perhaps the hardest question of all: How do you fund a new programming language in 2024?–Inko’s Homepage: https://inko-lang.org/Yorick’s Homepage: https://yorickpeterse.com/Ownership You Can Count On (paper): https://inko-lang.org/papers/ownership.pdf“The Error Model”: https://joeduffyblog.com/2016/02/07/the-error-model/Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkinsKris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krisjenkins/Kris on Twitter: https://twitter.com/krisajenkins

Nathan Sobo talks about building Zed, a text editor in Rust, focusing on UI design, performance optimization, and collaboration features. He discusses challenges in editor development, using Rust for Zed, high frame rate rendering, WebAssembly, and testing concurrent networking code. The podcast explores innovative features like TreeSitter, Language Server Protocol, and future visions for Zed, including open-sourcing components and CRDB integration.