Fallthrough

Versioning! It's a topic that we all deal with on a daily basis, and yet it's a topic that many of us dread. Our ecosystems love semantic versioning, but many of us find it lacking for many of our use cases. In this episode, Kris and Matt are joined once again by Jamie and Steve to talk about versioning. The panel discusses what versioning is, when to use Semantic Versioning, whether identifiers a...

Welcome to Break, a Fallthrough aftershow! After months of spending time after each recording of Fallthrough chatting, Kris and Matt decided it's time to record some of these chats and publish them to the world! In many ways the show's name is apropos: it's more like a watercooler break than a podcast recording and it's a break from the way we usually record podcast episodes. In this first episode...

The web has been around for nearly 40 years, yet despite its massive success, the principles that made it a success still prove elusive to most software engineers today. We've stumbled into a world where so called REST APIs are less RESTful than GraphQL, where most definitions of hypermedia are wrong, and where nuance has been replaced with "well actually". In this episode, Kris is joined by Matt,...

In episode 27, the panel discussed what languages are, what it means to know things, and what meaning is. In this bonus episode, we extend that conversation to discuss how language affects the tech and software communities. We delve into things like whether Codes of Conduct are actually a good thing, how efforts to make language more inclusive can be harmful, and much more. This content would usua...

Whether you're talking to another person, talking to a computer, or just talking to yourself, we use languages every day. For a long time now, there's been a debate about whether natural languages and programming languages are distinct from each other. The creation of large language models and their ability to produce code from natural language has blurred these lines even further. In this episode...

Speed and software should go hand in hand, but with Moore's Law coming to an end and CPU clock speeds remaining steady over the last 20 years, software engineers need to turn to new techniques to improve the efficiency of their code. In this episode, Matt and Angelica and joined by Clement Jean to discuss one of these techniques: SIMD. They'll discuss what SIMD is, how it can be used from language...

Building software is difficult and rarely can software engineers do it alone. In this episode, Kris is joined by Ian, Matthew, and Angelica to talk managing software projects and what three often used but rarely defined roles actually mean: project manager, product manager, and program manager. The panel also discusses how these roles interact with engineering managers, what they think these roles...

Error handling in Go is one of the language's most controversial topics. It ranks high in each Go Developer Survey and many different people have proposed many different solutions to the perceived problems. The Go Team's stance on error handling as a problem in need of a fix has changed recently, with a declaration that no proposals will be accepted for changes to Go's error handling syntax. In th...

AI is a divisive topic. Some people are AI boosters while others are AI doomers. And then there are those of us who sit in the middle, feeling both sides are not just wrong but that they aren't experiencing a shared reality with the rest of us. In this episode, Kris and Matt are joined by Steve Klabnik to talk about the state of AI and the discourse around it. For our supporters, this episode cont...

We all use open source software on a daily basis. Even though the software is free to consume doesn't mean it's free to produce. Over the years, there have been many attempts to support open source development financially, from companies that sell support to foundations and many things in between. On this week's episode, Angelica and Matt are joined by Filippo Valsorda and Daniel McCarney to discu...

When it comes to building distributed systems, RPC and REST style interfaces aren't the only options. Events provide an alternative way to build a distributed system that can result in more robust systems that are easier to extend and deploy, while reducing the chances of a single bottlenecked service taking down the entire system. In this episode, your host Angelica is joined by Indu Alagarsamy,...

From deploying WebAssembly all over the world, to using SQLite to keep track of distributed data, to blowing glass, this episode is quite the adventure! Your co-hosting power duo of Matt and Angelica are joined by Danielle Lancashire, a Principal Engineer at Fermyon, to navigate this discussion filled with insights and advice. This episode's extended content includes two chapters: one about the gr...

From implementing minesweeper on a TI calculator to becoming a prolific open source maintainer, Evan Phoenix has had quite the journey. In this week's episode, Matt & Angelica sit down with Evan to discuss his journey, from his early days writing basic on his TI calculator, to writing an alternative implementation of Ruby, being GitHub user #7, becoming a Principal Engineer at Hashicorp, start...

Little languages are powerful. From text processing with AWK to calculations with APL, domain specific languages help us do things more concisely and with more precision than with other languages. Anthony Starks knows this well, as he's designed several little languages, including decksh, the focus of this episode, which allows users to create powerful presentations without the hassle of pushing a...

Maintaining software is challenging, but monetizing it while properly valuing your time complicate matters even more. Doing all of this for open source projects is a challenge that few have figured out. In this week's episode Matt and Angelica are joined by Carlos Becker to discuss maintaining and monetizing open source projects, what it's like to work out an open source company, and how to value...

Most of us write code for servers and systems with terabytes of storage and gigabytes of RAM. This week, we're talking about Go in the small. Patricio Whittingslow joins Dylan and Angelica to discuss how he got started with Tiny Go; how he's used Go in software ranging from trajectory simulations to rocket fueling systems to rocket engine fuel injectors to 3D modeling; and so much more. To top it...

Fallthrough is a podcast about having conversations in public, and over the last 3 months we've shipped 15 of them! In this episode, Kris, Ian, and Matt sit down to discuss the podcast so far: what we've enjoyed, the feedback we've gotten, how we produce episodes, and so much more. We're excited to take a look at the first 15 episodes we've produced and look forward to making the next 15! Supporte...

APIs are built, not born, so how do we go about actually building them? Well, it starts with design. In this episode, Kris and Ian are joined by Jamie Tanna to talk about API design. From creating a theory of your API, through building its foundation, to actively prototyping as you design, the panel discusses what they've learned over the years to design high quality APIs. At the end we have unpop...

What does it mean to be a senior (or staff) software engineer? How are we preparing the next generation of software engineers to maintain the software we've created? In this episode, Matt and Kris are joined by Bill Kennedy to discuss tech communities, training software engineers, the landscape of learning, how artificial intelligence is affecting it all, and so much more. Supporters get access to...

Software is hard to build. From knowing which regulations apply to us to understanding what's in our software, there's a lot to learn. On top of that, regulation is coming for all of us. In this episode, Luis Villa joins Kris, Ian, and Angelica, to discuss the laws and regulations that will change the way that you build and deploy software. We discuss the EU's Cyber Resilience Act, the difficulty...

Communities play a vital role in our technical and non-technical lives, but how much thought have we put into what makes these spaces valuable? In this episode, Kris is joined by the panel and Kelsey Hightower to discuss communities and their intersection with the digital and non-digital world. Supporters get access to an extended conversation with Kelsey, where we discuss his views of AI and what...

There are Web APIs everywhere, from the classic REST/HTTP, to GraphQL, to gRPC, we rely on them to get things done each and every day. But how much do we think about the design of these APIs? How do you document an API once you've created it? What even is versioning? Do we really understand HTTP? In this episode, Kris and the panel are joined by Jamie Tanna to discuss APIs, their design, how to do...

We all have tools that make our lives better. Software tools, hardware tools, and everything in between. In this episode, Matt is joined by Kris, Ian, and Dylan to discuss some of their favorite tools, what they use them for, and why they chose them. Want to hear about the tools we don't like? Become a supporter and enjoy bonus content and higher quality audio today, and additional perks and benef...

What's a terminal? Why is it being emulated? On this week's episode, Matt and Kris are joined by Mitchell Hashimoto to discuss his newest project Ghostty, the Zig programming language, thoughts and feelings about Go, and more. As always, catch some Unpopular Opinions at the end of the episode. Want to hear even more from Mitchell? This episode features bonus content for our Fallthrough Fan and abo...

A recent Ars Technica article outlined a backdoor in the Go Module Mirror . Even though it's framed as a backdoor, and potentially a vulnerability, it's actually an exploit of a design choice designers of the module mirror made. Kris is joined by Matthew, Dylan, and guest host Jamie Tanna, to discuss this vulnerability-but-actually-feature, the implications for the Go community, and the wider reas...