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

This episode of The Programming Languages Podcast dives into Gleam, a type-safe, functional language that compiles to Erlang's BEAM VM. Lucas and Luna unpack why developers frustrated with Elixir's dynamic typing and JavaScript's complexity are flocking to Gleam. They discuss Gleam's strict type system, its seamless interop with Erlang and Elixir libraries, and real-world adoption at companies lik...

Lucas and Luna explore why Elixir's OTP (Open Telecom Platform) is gaining traction for building fault-tolerant, concurrent systems in 2026. They dive into a specific case: how Discord uses Elixir and OTP to handle millions of concurrent voice and chat users with minimal downtime. The hosts break down OTP's supervision trees, GenServers, and how Elixir's Erlang heritage makes it a unique choice fo...

Lucas and Luna explore why Julia, the high-performance language for numerical analysis, is finally breaking into production environments in 2026. They focus on the specific case of the Julia package ecosystem, particularly the DifferentialEquations.jl library, which is now used by NASA and Pfizer for modeling complex systems. The episode contrasts Julia with Python's NumPy and SciPy stack, examini...

Pony is an open-source programming language that brings the actor model and reference capabilities together for provably safe concurrency without a garbage collector pause. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how Pony's type system eliminates data races at compile time, why it's gaining traction in high-frequency trading and IoT, and how it compares to Rust, Erlang, and Go for concurrent workl...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore why Elixir, built on the Erlang VM, has become the language of choice for real-time, fault-tolerant systems in 2026. They dive into a specific case: Discord's move to Elixir for its messaging infrastructure, handling 400 million concurrent events daily with 99.999% uptime. The discussion covers the Actor model, OTP's supervision trees, and how Elixir's Phoen...

Episode 49 of The Programming Languages Podcast explores the rise of Kotlin on the server side. Lucas and Luna discuss why developers are increasingly choosing Kotlin over Java for backend systems, citing Kotlin's concise syntax, null safety, and seamless Java interop. They examine real-world adoption at companies like Netflix and Uber, and analyze how Kotlin's features like coroutines and data cl...

Lucas and Luna dive into why Go (Golang) has become the dominant language for cloud infrastructure in 2026. They break down how Go's concurrency model, fast compilation, and built-in tooling make it the default choice for Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and countless other cloud-native projects. Specific numbers: Go now powers over 75% of CNCF projects. The episode explores the technical decisions...

Lucas and Luna dig into the surprising rise of tablet-based coding. With Apple's iPad Pro M4 pushing 120 fps in Xcode and Samsung's DeX mode running full VS Code, more developers are ditching laptops for slates. They break down the hardware specs, the software gaps (no Docker on iPad, limited local emulation), and the real-world workflow of a mobile developer who codes entirely on an iPad. Plus: w...

In this episode of The Programming Languages Podcast with Fexingo, hosts Lucas and Luna explore the meteoric rise of TypeScript in 2026. They dive into how TypeScript's adoption has surged past 80% among professional JavaScript developers, driven by the rise of AI-generated code and the need for type safety in large codebases. Lucas breaks down the key numbers from the State of JS 2025 survey, inc...

Rust is no longer just for systems programmers. In 2026, its ownership model and safety guarantees are driving adoption across web services, embedded devices, and even frontend tooling. Lucas and Luna unpack the data: GitHub's Octoverse shows Rust grew 50% year-over-year in contributors, while the Linux kernel and Android now mandate Rust for new code. They examine why companies like Meta, Amazon,...

Lucas and Luna dive into why Dart and Flutter have become the dominant cross-platform framework in 2026, overtaking React Native and other competitors. They examine the technical decisions that made Flutter fast—like the Skia graphics engine and the Dart virtual machine—and discuss how Google's bet on Fuchsia OS and ambient computing is driving investment. Lucas walks through the key metrics: over...

Lucas and Luna explore why AWK, a text-processing language from 1977, remains irreplaceable for one-liner data analysis on the command line. They walk through a specific example: extracting and summing top seller data from a 50,000-line CSV in a single line of AWK, comparing it to Python and SQL. The episode covers AWK's pattern-action model, associative arrays, and why it beats modern tools for q...

Lucas and Luna dig into why the Java Virtual Machine, despite being over three decades old, remains the runtime of choice for mission-critical backend systems in 2026. They examine Project Loom's virtual threads, which have slashed latency for concurrent applications, and compare GraalVM's native-image compilation against Go's compiled binaries. The conversation cites real numbers: how a major tra...

Lucas and Luna explore why OCaml, a language born in the 1990s, is quietly becoming the backbone of high-stakes financial systems. They examine its role at Jane Street Capital, where OCaml handles $5 trillion in daily trading volume, and contrast it with Rust's approach to safety. The episode also touches on why OCaml's strict typing catches bugs that cause billion-dollar losses in other languages...

Google's Carbon language was introduced in 2022 as a potential successor to C++. As of mid-2026, where does it stand? Lucas and Luna examine Carbon's design goals, its interoperability with existing C++ codebases, and the challenges it faces in gaining adoption. They discuss the open-source community's response, the role of Google's internal use, and why replacing a language as entrenched as C++ i...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore why SQL remains the most underrated skill for developers in 2026. They break down how SQLite processes over one trillion queries per day, why modern tools like DuckDB are making SQL relevant for data science, and how knowing window functions can separate a junior from a senior engineer. They also discuss the rise of SQL-based analytics in fintech and how com...

In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how WebAssembly (Wasm) is moving beyond the browser to reshape cloud computing. They focus on a specific case: the rise of serverless Wasm runtimes like WasmEdge and Fermyon Spin, which are enabling faster cold starts and language-agnostic microservices. Lucas explains how WebAssembly reduces container overhead by 50-70% in certain workloads, citing a 2025 C...

Episode 37 of The Programming Languages Podcast dives into Zig, a systems programming language that's gaining traction in 2026 for its simplicity, safety, and performance. Lucas and Luna explore why Zig is challenging C and Rust, its unique approach to memory management, and how it's being adopted in embedded systems, game development, and tooling. They discuss the language's zero-cost abstraction...

Episode 36 of The Programming Languages Podcast examines Mojo, the new language from Modular AI that aims to combine Python's usability with C-like performance for machine learning workloads. Lucas and Luna break down Mojo's unique 'syntactic sugar plus MLIR' approach, why it's not just another Python competitor, and what the 2026 ecosystem looks like — including the just-released Mojo 1.0 standar...

Lucas and Luna explore why Lua, a lightweight scripting language from the 1990s, has become the secret engine behind game modding, embedded IoT, and even Redis scripting in 2026. With 1.5 billion devices running Lua via the Corona SDK alone, they break down its design philosophy of minimalism, its surprising role in the Roblox ecosystem, and why it's gaining new traction in constrained environment...

Lucas and Luna drill into a single concrete number: PostgreSQL's 40 percent market share growth among new deployments in 2026. They trace how the database went from an academic underdog to the default choice for AI workloads, real-time analytics, and mission-critical OLTP. The hosts walk through three specific drivers — the pgvector extension for vector search, the rise of managed Postgres on clou...

Kubernetes changed how we deploy software, but few people talk about how it changed the languages we write that software in. This episode explores Kubernetes as a language forcing function — why Go became the lingua franca of cloud-native infrastructure, how Rust carved out a niche for performance-critical components, and why Python and JavaScript had to adapt rather than lead. Lucas and Luna walk...

Gleam is a statically typed language that compiles to Erlang's BEAM virtual machine, bringing the reliability of Erlang and Elixir to developers who prefer a Rust-like type system. In this episode, Lucas and Luna explore how Gleam's strong types and simple syntax are making BEAM languages accessible to a new generation of programmers. They examine real-world adoption at companies like Bluetau and...

SQLite is the most deployed database engine on earth, running on billions of devices from smartphones to airplanes. Yet most developers barely think about it. In this episode of The Programming Languages Podcast with Fexingo, Lucas and Luna explore how SQLite became a critical piece of infrastructure, why its single-file design and public-domain licensing made it ubiquitous, and how it handles con...

Episode 30 of The Programming Languages Podcast explores formal verification — the practice of mathematically proving code correctness — and why it's moving beyond aerospace and academia into everyday development. Lucas and Luna examine how Amazon Web Services uses TLA+ to verify its distributed systems, preventing outages like the ones that cost e-commerce platforms millions per hour. They break...