CoRecursive: Coding Stories

What if the tools you trust were actually betraying you? Join us for a riveting story where a team of software developers discovers that their compiler is compromised. What starts as suspicion of a simple bug quickly escalates into the alarming realization.   In this 100th episode celebration past show regulars Don and Krystal join Adam lend their voice to this work of fiction about the limits of...

Meet Mick West, whose career began in an unusual office setup — sandwiched between a kebab shop and a phone sex hotline. From there he worked all over Manchester, making computer games for Tiertex and Ocean.    Career opportunies brought him to California and to his own game dev company, Neversoft. At Neversoft, navigating team growth and tight deadlines, Mick played a key role in creating "Tony H...

What if your dedication to doing things right clashed with your company's fast pace? Chris Krycho faced this very question at LinkedIn. His journey was marked by challenges: from the nuances of remote work to the struggle of influencing company culture, and a critical incident that put his principles to the test against the company's push for speed. Chris's story highlights the tension between the...

Greg Wilson has been on a decades-long quest to transform how we teach and talk about software design. From getting rejections for using the term "beautiful code," to empowering scientists through workshops on Python and Unix, Greg has pushed to bridge the gap between theory and practice. Join us as Greg shares his failures and epiphanies along the way. You'll hear how he revolutionized research c...

What if your dreams were suddenly ripped away? What if your talents vanished, your passions erased? That's what happened to Jason McDonald when a traumatic brain injury at 16 ravaged his planned destiny of becoming a doctor. Jason painfully rebuilt his ind and body from scratch - relearning to read, write, even speak.   A serendipitous discovery of coding ignited a new passion within Jason. He dov...

From the early days of exploring creative possibilities on a 486 computer in his childhood to developing one of today's most popular web frameworks, Evan You's journey is a tale of passion and innovation.    Evan started Vue.js while working at Google, just wanting to scratch his own itch for a lightweight JavaScript framework. But soon Vue started to gain a huge following.  Eventually Evan then f...

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 Spotify's Platform teams embraced transparency and customer focu...

Lost treasure. Conspiracy theories. Impossible tech demos.  Jan Sloot claimed to have invented revolutionary data compression that could fit a full movie into a tiny smart card chip. Top executives and investors witnessed his demos and became true believers, ready to bankroll this company into the stratosphere.  But was it all an elaborate illusion?  Join me as I unravel the perplexing story of Ja...

Today, we go behind the scenes at Chef - the game changing infrastructure automation tool. Adam Jacob created Chef, and it became a massively popular DevOps tool. But despite Chef's success, Adam constantly battled self-doubt and finding his footing as a leader.  In this raw episode, Adam shares how the pressure of going from sysadmin to startup CEO caused an identity crisis. He opens up about the...

Learning to code can feel impossible. Like facing a sheer rock wall with no ropes or harnesses. But what if there was a path up the mountain? A trail blazed smooth by master coders who went before?  In this episode, we'll follow that path. We'll hear the stories of legends like Seymour Papert, who championed active, project-based learning. Of Fred Brooks, who discovered that pairing accelerates le...

 Have you ever been frustrated with your job? Maybe not burnt out, but getting close to there? You used to love what you did, and it felt so creative and empowering, but then it starts to feel a bit more cookie cutter. Have you ever been frustrated with your whole life? The daily grind has taken what you love and it just doesn't feel the same anymore. Some of the magic just has slowly faded away....

Today, we meet Ben Dumke-von der Ehe, one of the early developers on the Stack Overflow team.  He was on the front lines as the platform transformed how programmers worked. And he embodies the spirit of Stack Overflow:  Its transparency, playfulness, and even some of its struggles to be as welcoming and friendly as it should be.    But you'll see what I mean.    So stick around as Ben takes us on...

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 to becoming one of the most sought-after developers in the world. What happens whe...

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 Doug is an iconoclast Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The...

Shai Almog worked at Sun on Mobile JVMs just as phones started to turn from phones into something else.     Sun had deep expertise in mobile development, and amazing engineering driven culture and relationships with manufacturers and operators. And yet interal politics and the collapse of its server market made it hard to get things done.    At Sun, as the mobile market changed, Shai and his frien...

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? What if I couldn't accept that? That is what Ron Avitzur's story i...

Nothing good comes from being insecure about your worth, especially at your job. That's what today's episode is about. That's what today's guest is here to discuss.  It's a slow burn, but if you listen to the end, I think you will value yourself more professionally. My Guest is Don Mckay. Someone longtime listeners will undoubtedly know. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join...

Today Rebecca Burger Becky Heineman shares the tale of porting Doom to the 3DO console under extreme conditions. There is an engine to tweak, deadlines to hit, hardware acceleration to get working, and dramatic rock anthems to record. We also learn about how game piracy led her to game development and what it was like to do game development in the mania of the mid-nineties. Finally, we close with...

Today story is from Son Luong Ngoc who shares what's it was like for him to work and live in many different countries around the world, including working for AliBaba at the Xixi campus in Hangzhou, China. It's a story of a software developer finding a place that fits them, a place that suits them. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter

What could you accomplish if your teammates were all excited and determined to hit some project timelines? What is it like for a group of people to give it all they have? That's what today is about.     Chet Haase from the Android team is here to share the story of the early days of Android, the mobile operating system that powers the majority of phones worldwide. We'll cover the years from 2005 t...

 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 know about Rick. But today's episode is about Rick's path to rede...

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. If you are building things today by pulling in various packages from various open source places – and really, who isn't – then the history of how this world came to be is essential. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The N...

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 1964 paper.  But here is the mystery. We're not sure how the original version worked. Jos...

On June 1st, 2014, the following question showed up on hacker news:  "Why is 80 characters, the standard limit for code width." You probably know what happens next. People started to post their opinions and the comments and other people started to disagree. The posts spread around the internet.  So that is going to be today's show: Let's answer this question.   It's a question about traditions and...

Have you ever had a unique approach to a problem and been excited to use it, but you're met with skepticism?   Today's story: what happens if you take someone who's passionate about LISP and put them in an organization where that's just not how they write software.   Today's story is about getting LISP into space. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter