CoRecursive: Coding Stories

Latest Episodes:

Story: Sun's Mobile Blunders Mar 02, 2023

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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 friend Chen Fishbein launched a popular UI toolkit. Today Shai shares their struggles at Sun and after it to shape mobile UI development.

Story: Shipping Graphing Calculator Feb 02, 2023

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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 is all about. He is the creator of "Graphing Calculator," and he would not let it be canceled.

Story: The Unfulfilled Engineer Jan 02, 2023

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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.

Story: DOOMed to Fail Dec 02, 2022

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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 Becky's advice on learning bare metal development skills.

Story: Software World Tour Nov 02, 2022

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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.

Story: Android's Unlikely Success Oct 03, 2022

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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 to around 2011. It's a wild story.

Story: From Prison To Programming Sep 02, 2022

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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 redemption him, teaching himself to code in prison, smuggling in a Python interpreter, and then getting out and trying to get a job as a dev when you're a felon.

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UnderDog Devs

CPAN - This Day In History Aug 01, 2022

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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.

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Story: The History and Mystery Of Eliza Jul 05, 2022

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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. Joseph Weizenbaum never released the code. But Jeff tracked it down, and some of the things we thought we knew about Eliza turned out to be wrong.

Chat: Why still 80 columns? Jun 01, 2022

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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 teamwork, and how preexisting idioms shape us and help us, but sometimes restrict us.

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