Two's Complement

Matt and Ben talk about their experiences creating games, both digital and analog. Matt recalls building games for the XBox, Dreamcast, and PS2. Ben talks about what makes board games fun, and how to lose your friends through playtesting.

Matt and Ben talk about code linters, and meander into various topics. Matt describes the (approximately) 37 different ways to cast variables in C++. Ben argues that continuous integration was better in the 19th century.

Ben and Matt explore the world of programming languages. So many! Why are there so many? Wait, there's a Java Mobile Edition? Who would use such a thing? The hosts of the #1 top ranked programming podcast that my mom listens to, that's who.

The podcast explores the importance of clear explanations and context in pull requests, making small and focused changes, providing constructive feedback in code reviews, collaborating through mob programming, interpreting and implementing collaborative solutions, and creating the right situation for successful collaboration.

The podcast explores pair programming and its benefits, discussing techniques like ping pong and the use of patterns. It also emphasizes the importance of recognizing hindering behavior and learning from others. The chapter compares pair programming with pull requests and explores the advantages of each. Additionally, it discusses the importance of loving and reverting commits to facilitate fixing mistakes. Finally, the speakers discuss different problem-solving approaches and the balance between creativity and analysis paralysis.

Matt and Ben discuss the kinds of things modern CPUs do behind the scenes. Branch prediction, caching, speculation, out-of-order processing, hyper-threading, register renaming... Lots of things most people don't need to know. Matt gets overly excited, and Ben channels Larry King to try and keep him on track.

The podcast discusses the benefits of using boring tools like databases for automation and local development. They also emphasize the importance of automation in software projects, the consequences of not auto pushing, and the value of avoiding database dependency in software projects.

Matt and Ben discuss their favorite *nix command line tools, and make various movie references while doing so. Included in this episode are references to both Sergio Leone and gunzip, although the two are surprisingly unrelated. Matt recalls using System Tap to discover latency in a trading system. Ben explains a method for writing Wireshark plugins that sparks joy.

Matt and Ben compare monorepo vs multi-repo layouts, explain Conways Law, talk about what a 'team' is, and what Visual Source Safe isn't. Ben defines how big a service should be. Matt recalls a brief interlude with Clojure.

Join our hosts as they talk about hobby hardware projects, past and present. Matt explains how he's building a digital picture frame out of a Raspberry Pi Pico and E-Ink display. Ben talks about building a Halloween candy dispenser using devices both serial and cereal. Matt and Ben discover they both liked MP3s in the early 00's.