Programming Throwdown

Patrick and Jason break down recursion as a practical problem-solving technique rather than a classroom trick. They cover base cases, recursive steps, common pitfalls such as nontermination and stack limits, and real applications in trees, graphs, and divide-and-conquer algorithms.

In the latest episode of Programming Throwdown, we delve into the captivating world of interactive fiction. We explore: Wordnet, Inform, and how games in the past have been the forerunners of today’s NLP challenges.

MosaicML’s VP Of Engineering, Hagay Lupesko, joins us today to discuss generative AI! We talk about how to use existing models as well as ways to finetune these models to a particular task or domain.

It’s a question that may seem easy to answer on the surface, but in truth hides more complexity than people expect. In today’s episode, we tackle the latest on AI, creative endeavors, and more before diving into the meaty discussion of position localization.

GraphQL is one of the biggest API enablers in software development, but just how complicated can things be? Tanmai Gopal – Hasura’s CEO extraordinaire – talks with Jason and Patrick about how the secret sauce gets made.

In today’s episode, Jason and Patrick dive deeply with JFrog’s Senior Solutions Engineer, Bill Manning. With the conversation tackling the depth and complexity of software supply chains, vulnerabilities and more, Bill deftly offers grounded advice to listeners old and new.

There’s more than what meets the eye when it comes to Kubernetes, and Craig Box – ARMO’s VP of Open Source & Community –is one of several who have seen its many twists and turns since its inception. He talks with Jason and Patrick about Kubernetes’ origins in pop culture, utility in the modern workflow, and possible future in today’s episode.

Join Patrick and Jason as they tackle their answers to these timely questions – plus an in-depth discussion on Perl in practice – with today’s episode of Programming Throwdown.

When it comes to untangling the complexities of what lies ahead for search engines in this age of AI, few are as deeply versed in the subject as You.com Engineer Saahil Jain. Jason and Patrick talk with him in this episode about what search even is, what challenges lie ahead, and where the shift in paradigms can be found.

A second Jason joins this episode of Programming Throwdown! Jason McDonald – Python evangelist, author, and more – talks to Patrick and Jason about his experience with the programming language, how his disability helped and hindered his software career, and where its strengths and weaknesses lie.

has made a mark on the world as we know it, but that’s only the tip of the AI iceberg. Join us as we discuss how the field of artificial intelligence is growing – including some developments that might not be on your radar!

Databases are key to almost any project, large or small. Most database systems in the cloud are designed for heavy use and the costs can get expensive quickly, but database-as-a-service is a rapidly growing area, where many databases can share the same hardware for a much reduced rate, or even for free! Sam Lambert, CEO of PlanetScale, joins Jason and Patrick to discuss database-as-a-service.

Machine Learning Engineer is one of the fastest growing professions on the planet. Liran Hason, co-founder and CEO of Aporia, joins us to discuss this new field and how folks can learn the skills and gain the experience needed to become an ML Engineer!

Patrick and I are always stressing the importance of code reviews and collaboration when developing. On Freund, co-founder & CEO at Wilco, is super familiar with how code review processes can go well, or become a hinderance. In today’s episode with us, he shares his unique perspective on code reviews and maintaining high code quality!

At scale, anything we build is going to involve people. Many of us have personal schedules and to-do lists, but how can we scale that to hundreds or even thousands of people? When you file a help ticket at a massive company like Google or Facebook, ever wonder how that ticket is processed? Sanjay Siddhanti, Akasa’s Director of Engineering, is no slouch when it comes to navigating massive workflow...

Today we field questions from Programming Throwdown’s listeners about AI, machine learning, and more practical matters as developers in our annual holiday special!

Package managers are an often-overlooked aspect of any operating system, but their importance is not to be underestimated – especially in today’s development environment. As both creator of Homebrew and CEO of tea.xyz, Max Howell is intimately familiar with the ins and outs of open-source development, software engineering, and balancing passion with practicality. He shares these experiences and mo...

Yonatan Cohen – Co-Founder & CTO of Quantum Machines – joins us in this episode to tackle quantum computing! Did you know anyone can run quantum programs on Amazon Web Services for mere dollars? Learn about this field early to take pole superposition in the race to understand and use quantum computers!

In this tour-de-force, Mike Dalessio – Engineering Director at Shopify – and Evan Phoenix – self-described “long-time Rubyist” – join us for a practical discussion of all things Ruby! Ruby is a beautiful language, and we're really excited to cover the history and present of this language with two experts.

Today we discuss adventures, books, tools, and art discoveries before diving into unsupervised machine learning in this duo episode!

Today we go back to our programming language roots with author, KT Academy founder, and Kotlin rockstar Marcin Moskala! We talk about how Kotlin makes itself doubly useful for app and backend development.

Finding something online might seem easy - but as Marcus Eagan tells it, it’s not easy to get it right. In today’s episode, MongoDB’s Staff Product Manager on Atlas Search speaks with Jason and Patrick about his own journey in software development and how to best use search engines to capture user intent.

Douwe Maan’s journey sounds too fantastic to be true, yet the tale that Meltano’s founder shares with Jason and Patrick today is very, very real. Whether it’s about doing software development by 11, joining Gitlab while juggling college responsibilities, or building his own company during today’s challenging times, he has quite the story to tell. In today’s episode, he speaks on Twitter, his persp...

Chip Morningstar, Software Engineer at Agoric, has had quite a career in the software industry – from designing spaceships, to joining Lucasfilm’s entertainment brands, to the emerging cryptocurrency industry. In this episode, he talks with Patrick and Jason about these and more: security in today’s online world, AI’s nascent role in gaming, and how expectations in game releases have changed with...

Burnout in the tech industry is a very prominent concern among both leaders and developers alike. Ronak Rahman, Developer Relations Manager at Quali, joins Patrick and I in this episode to share his experience, and why having the right infrastructure in place can prevent work-life erosion (plus sticker shock with cloud service bills)!