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The Stack Overflow Podcast

Latest episodes

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May 4, 2021 • 24min

Open source contributors helped a helicopter fly on Mars

You can check out the badge Github gave to folks for helping with the Mars flight here. You can learn more about F´, NASA’s open source flight software and embedded system framework, here.Paul tells the story of a shady financial operator who offered to take his blog public during the dot com boom. Yes, Ftrain.com was once an IPO candidate.Who copies and pastes from Stack Overflow? We dig into some of the data from our April Fools joke to get a sense of the scale and collaboration happening across our community.Paul takes a tutorial on coding with Ethereum but decides decarbonizing is the real future for software.Today's lifeboat badge winner is Scott M., who answered the question: How to remove one line from a txt file? 
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Apr 30, 2021 • 21min

One founder's journey from personal trainer to "frontend mentor"

You can check out Frontend Mentor here. Try a few challenges or join their Slack, where thousands of students are chatting about how they are approaching the projects.You can follow Matt on Twitter here. If you want to read about how he made the jump from personal trainer to web developer, he did a nice interview with Indie London.Our lifeboat of the week goes to Banex for answering the question: why do we use NULL in strtok()?
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Apr 27, 2021 • 32min

From music to trading cards, software is transforming curation and collecting

You can follow David on Twitter here and read his blog here.Check out more about Dapper Labs and it's work with the NBA and NFTs here.David has written some influential pieces on the world of digital music and the role of software platforms. Check out a few of his pieces here.Read about David's adventure's setting up a Minecraft server for his kids and using software for griefer detection. Thanks to our lifeboat badge winner of the week, Keith Thompson, for answering the question: Go lang differentiate “\n” and line breakAs Keith eloquently explains, "There is no distinction between a 'real' and an 'unreal' line break." 
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Apr 23, 2021 • 25min

Non-fungible Talking

Want to try developing with Ethereum? Free Code Camp has you covered.On the other hand, here are some thoughts on why it's not the greatest language for developers.Interested in minting your own NFT? There are lots of options. Ethereum can be more expensive to use (those gas fees, ouch) but it also has the most active network of artists and collectors.Thanks to Phlume, our lifeboat badge winner of the week, for answering the question: How do I remove the double border on this table?
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Apr 20, 2021 • 15min

One in four visitors to Stack Overflow copies code

You can check out our deep dive into the copy paste data here. We saw over 40 million copies in the two weeks worth of activity we analyzed.Kyle  Pollard graduated from the University of Northern British Columbia and worked as a computer technician and  programmer for the City of Prince George in Canada.  You can find him on Github, Twitter, and his website.There’s lots of info about Cassidy’s various projects at cassidoo.co.  You can catch her coding live at @cassidoo, Thursdays at 12:30 PT/2:30 Central/3:30 Eastern.Our lifeboat badge winner of the week is TJ Crowder, who answered the question: How can I see the source of built-in JavaScript functions?
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Apr 16, 2021 • 37min

How to build and maintain online communities, from gaming to open source

You can follow David on Twitter here. If you want to check out his new book, The Business of Belonging,  the first chapter is available here.You can find out more about CMX here and learn more about Bevy here.Cesar prefers to remain off social media, but you can find him on LinkedIn.
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Apr 13, 2021 • 25min

Two words for ya: networked spreadsheets

Dave Winer wrote a fun piece on the lost apps of the 80s. We explore the paradox of software that is "too good" to become popular among mainstream consumers. Microsoft has been releasing new versions of its flagship flight simulator each year for a whopping 38 years now. Now we know what makes it seem so very, very real. But just how big can that next patch be? Another day, another data breach. At this point, we've become numb to the notion that our identity is compromised.  Is acceptance better for your health than constantly being on guard? See for yourself.
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Apr 9, 2021 • 22min

For Twilio's CIO, every internal developer is a customer

You can find Michelle on Twitter here.You can learn more about building apps with Twilio here.Our lifeboat badge of the week goes to TryingToLearn for explaining the error that pops up in Python when: you can't assign to literal.
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Apr 6, 2021 • 32min

Web programming with nothing but Python

Lots of people who work outside of programming learn Python as part of their job. When folks from telecom, academia, or medical science want to build a web app to help with their job or share their findings with the world, they may feel they need to learn Javascript, CSS, HTML, and half a dozen frameworks to get started. Anvil is a platform that hopes to enable the creation of great web apps with nothing but Python code. You can drag and drop your user elements and rely on Anvil to handle your server and database. He also created Skulpt, which you can check out here. It's decscribed as follows, "Python. Client Side. Skulpt is an entirely in-browser implementation of Python. No preprocessing, plugins, or server-side support required, just write Python and reload. Want to go deeper? Check out his talk on Full Stack Web Development with nothing but Python here. You can follow him on Twitter here and Github here.
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Apr 2, 2021 • 25min

What does being a "nerd" even mean these days?

Despite its reputation, there is a Go To for every language. You can dive deeper with the Summer of Go To.There is a lot you can learn from it as a beginner, even if it is worth avoiding as a professional.Paul's children have learned to inspect the element and the document object model. Being deep into computers seems normal in an era of remote school and omnipresent devices. Who doesn't like making tree maps of memory usage or cropping and splicing footage on TikTok? If all kids are into computer hacking and AV Club activities like film editing and music producing...what does being a nerd mean anymore? Google has a whole slew of online certificates that allow you to find entry points into a career in  data analysis, UX design, or project management. 

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