The Programming Languages Podcast with Fexingo: Python, Rust, JavaScript, and Modern Coding

In this episode of The Programming Languages Podcast, Lucas and Luna dive into Julia — the high-performance language that's quietly reshaping scientific computing, data science, and machine learning. They explore why Julia's just-in-time compilation and multiple dispatch make it a compelling alternative to Python for numerical work, and discuss how the Pumas project is using Julia for pharmaceutic...

Episode 78 of The Programming Languages Podcast explores Haskell's unexpected resurgence in production environments. Lucas and Luna break down why companies like GitHub, JPMorgan Chase, and a European airline are adopting this purely functional language for critical systems. We focus on the concrete case of a legacy Spark pipeline at a major bank being rewritten in Haskell — cutting infrastructure...

In this episode of The Programming Languages Podcast with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore why Lua, a lightweight scripting language created in 1993, remains the hidden backbone of modern game development. They discuss how game engines like Roblox and World of Warcraft embed Lua for modding and customization, the language's unique design trade-offs (no native classes, 1-based indexing), and why its...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna dive into Elixir—a language that's quietly becoming the go-to for building fault-tolerant, real-time systems. They explore how Elixir's actor model, built on the Erlang VM, allows companies like Discord and Pinterest to handle millions of concurrent users with minimal downtime. The conversation focuses on Discord's migration from Go to Elixir in 2023 and how that de...

Lucas and Luna dive into Apache Kafka's evolution from a LinkedIn messaging system to the de facto standard for event-driven architecture in 2026. They unpack how Kafka's log-based design handles millions of events per second at companies like Uber and Netflix, why its ecosystem has grown to include Kafka Connect and Kafka Streams, and how new tiered storage and KRaft consensus are reshaping its f...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna dive into Erlang, the 40-year-old language that still runs WhatsApp's messaging backbone and powers telecom switches handling billions of calls. They explore why Erlang's actor model, hot code swapping, and fault tolerance are uniquely suited for high-reliability systems, and how it compares to modern languages like Rust and Go. The hosts discuss real-world numbers:...

In this episode of The Programming Languages Podcast, Lucas and Luna challenge the growing narrative that GraphQL is a failed experiment. They examine a real-world case: how a mid-size e-commerce company achieved a 40 percent reduction in mobile data usage by switching from REST to GraphQL in mid-2025. The hosts break down the performance numbers, discuss why some teams struggle with GraphQL, and...

Lucas and Luna dive into why Go has become the dominant language for cloud-native infrastructure, using Kubernetes as a case study. They discuss Go's simplicity, fast compile times, and concurrency model, and how it compares to Rust and Java for microservices. With over 7 out of 10 cloud-native projects now using Go, they explore the trade-offs and why big tech like Uber and Twitch are migrating t...

Lucas and Luna dive into why Rust is rapidly becoming the go-to language for embedded systems development. With a focus on memory safety, zero-cost abstractions, and growing ecosystem support, they explore real-world adoption by companies like Google in Android's Rust-based Binder driver and Infineon's Rust SDK for microcontrollers. They discuss how Rust's ownership model eliminates entire classes...

In this episode of The Programming Languages Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore how Kotlin has become the dominant language for Android development and is now expanding into server-side, multiplatform, and data science. They discuss Kotlin's rise from JetBrains' lab to Google's preferred language, its modern features like coroutines and null safety, and how it's competing with Java, Swift, and Rust....

Lucas and Luna dive into Dart's surprising surge in 2026. With Flutter powering everything from mobile apps to embedded displays, Dart has become one of the fastest-growing languages on GitHub. We look at why developers are choosing it over JavaScript and Kotlin, how Google's investment is paying off, and a real-world case study from a fintech startup that cut its codebase in half. Plus, the hosts...

Lucas and Luna explore how TypeScript has grown from a niche superset to the default language for large-scale JavaScript development in 2026. They break down the recent milestone of 70% adoption among professional developers, the impact of the TypeScript 5.8 release with its new decorator standard, and why companies like Vercel and Google are investing heavily in the ecosystem. The episode also co...

Lucas and Luna explore the surprising staying power of C++ in 2026. With recent updates like C++23 and C++26 on the horizon, the language continues to dominate high-performance domains—from game engines to financial trading to autonomous vehicles. They break down why C++ remains indispensable despite the rise of Rust and Zig, using concrete examples like Unreal Engine 5 and high-frequency trading...

Episode 66 dives into Rust's growing role inside the Linux kernel as of June 2026. Lucas and Luna explore the recent merge of Rust-for-Linux patches into mainline, the number of Rust drivers now shipping, and what this means for memory safety in critical infrastructure. They discuss the tension between C maintainers and Rust advocates, the performance trade-offs, and why companies like Google and...

Lucas and Luna dive into Mojo, a new programming language designed to combine Python's usability with C-level performance for AI and ML workloads. They explore how Modular's creation uses MLIR to run AI models up to 3500 times faster than Python, why it's gaining traction in the AI community in 2026, and how it compares to alternatives like CUDA and Julia. With specific benchmarks and real-world u...

In this episode of The Programming Languages Podcast with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna unpack the quiet dominance of SQLite — the world's most deployed database engine. They explore why this embedded, serverless library runs on more than one trillion devices, from smartphones and cars to web browsers and spacecraft. The hosts dive into SQLite's unique architecture: no client-server setup, zero configur...

Zig, a new systems programming language, is gaining traction as a potential successor to C. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore why developers are turning to Zig for its safety, clarity, and simplicity. They discuss how Zig's approach to memory management, compile-time execution, and cross-compilation offers concrete advantages over C for systems programming. The hosts examine real-world adopt...

Episode 62 of The Programming Languages Podcast explores why OCaml has become a powerhouse in the financial technology sector. Lucas and Luna examine how Jane Street, a quantitative trading firm, relies on OCaml for its core trading systems—processing billions of dollars daily. They discuss OCaml's strong static typing, pattern matching, and garbage collection that make it ideal for correctness-cr...

Lucas and Luna dive into the quiet dominance of SQLite — the embedded database engine that runs on over a trillion devices, from smartphones and web browsers to aircraft and IoT sensors. They unpack why a library with no server, no configuration, and no separate process has become the most deployed database in the world. Using real numbers — including the 2025 SQLite Consortium release — they expl...

Lucas and Luna explore why R, the 30-year-old statistical programming language, is experiencing a renaissance in 2026. They break down the explosion of the R-Universe package ecosystem—now over 25,000 packages—and how modern tools like Quarto and the Tidyverse are making R competitive with Python for data science. The hosts discuss a real-world case: how the U.S. Census Bureau's switch to R for it...

In this episode of The Programming Languages Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore how WebAssembly (Wasm) is quietly transforming cloud computing. They dive into a concrete case: Fastly's adoption of Wasm for edge computing, which reduced cold-start times from 50 milliseconds to under 1 millisecond. They discuss why startups like Fermyon and Suborbital are betting on Wasm over containers, and how the co...

In this episode of The Programming Languages Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore why Zig is gaining momentum as a modern alternative to C for systems programming. They dive into Zig's core design philosophy: no hidden control flow, first-class cross-compilation, and a compile-time execution model that eliminates the preprocessor. Lucas breaks down how Zig's comptime feature allows metaprogramming with...

Lua is everywhere in gaming, yet most developers barely know it exists. In this episode, Lucas and Luna trace how a tiny scripting language from Brazil became the embedded language of choice for World of Warcraft, Roblox, and even Redis. They unpack why Lua's simplicity and C-friendly design made it a natural fit for games, how Roblox created an entire economy around it, and what LuaJIT's uncertai...

In this episode of The Programming Languages Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore why Scala 3 is quietly gaining traction among enterprise developers in 2026. They break down specific language improvements like enums, given/using clauses, and the new macro system, and compare Scala's strengths to Kotlin and Java. They also touch on real-world adoption at companies like ZIO and Akka, and reflect on whet...

In this episode of The Programming Languages Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore why Haskell is experiencing a resurgence in 2026 as the go-to language for mission-critical software where correctness is paramount. They dive into how companies like Mercury, a fintech startup, have adopted Haskell for its strong type system and purity guarantees, reducing production bugs by 40% compared to their previou...