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PODCAST

Picture Me Coding

Erik Aker and Mike Mull

Picture Me Coding is a music podcast about software. Each week your hosts Erik Aker and Mike Mull take on topics in the software world and they are sometimes joined by guests from other fields who arrive with their own burning questions about technology.Email us at: podcast@picturemecoding.comPatreon: https://patreon.com/PictureMeCodingYou can also pick up a Picture Me Coding shirt, mug, or stickers at our Threadless shop: https://picturemecoding.threadless.com/designsLogo and artwork by Jon

technology

All Episodes

66:44

"Where are all the elders?"

Picture Me Coding ·

2025/02/26

This week we continue Mike's origin story for another 20 years of his history and Erik asks him the question: "Where did all the old people go?" Send us a text

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51:02

Origin Story: Part 1 - Mike Fails at Being a Chemist

Picture Me Coding ·

2025/02/19

This episode has a bit of everything. Spaceships! Killer storms! Piracy! Supercomputers that look like furniture! But mainly we discover how Mike fell into his lifelong pattern of turning everything into an opportunity to mess around with computers. Send us a text

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68:06

The Failure Modes of Agile with Dr Junade Ali

Picture Me Coding ·

2025/02/12

In Episode 40 “Agile Trashers Part 2: The Trashening” we mentioned a study titled “268% Higher Failure Rates for Agile Software Projects”. News about this study showed up in all of the usual places (Hacker News, Reddit, TLDR, Google, Slashdot, etc.) and it caused a bit of a stir. That study was published by our guest today, Dr Junade Ali. In this episode we talk about software failure, agile, and what practices might come next. Links “268% Higher Failure Rates for Agile Software Proje...

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62:56

Do Programmers Need to Know Anything About Computers?

Picture Me Coding ·

2025/02/05

This episode is based on a mild difference in view that Erik and I have about whether it’s useful for programmers to know details of computer hardware. I feel that it is important and beneficial. Erik feels... Well, he never did tell me what he really thinks here but I got him to confess that he sometimes solves problems without knowing the reason for the problem in the first place! Send us a text

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67:41

The Story of the CAP Theorem Part 2

Picture Me Coding ·

2025/01/29

Mike and Erik return to the CAP Theorem to finish the discussion started last week. Their goal is to try to find answers to this question: why do software engineers love to talk about the CAP Theorem so much? This episode covers the 2002 Gilbert and Lynch proof of CAP, as well as more recent critiques of the CAP Theorem, mostly based on Martin Kleppeman's article “Please Stop Calling Databases CP OR AP”. LinksBrewer’s “Towards Robust Distributed Systems” (slideshow of the talk!)FLP Paper: Imp...

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57:52

The Story of the CAP Theorem Part 1

Picture Me Coding ·

2025/01/22

Your podcast hosts have a suspicion about the CAP Theorem: if you're a working programmer and you've heard of any single result in the field of distributed systems, we think you'll have heard of the CAP Theorem. But did you ever wonder where it comes from? In this episode, we'll tell the story of the CAP Theorem. THERE WILL BE BLUEBERRIES!!!Reach us by email: podcast@picturemecoding.comSponsor us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/PictureMeCodingLinks2000 PODC website Brewer’s “Towards Robu...

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86:13

Gleaming the Lambda Cube with Nathan Mull

Picture Me Coding ·

2025/01/15

This week Nathan Mull, a type theorist and CS Professor at Boston University, came on the show to help Mike and Erik understand what the phrase "Propositions as Types" is all about. This is an idea about how programs are connected to logic and mathematical proofs, whether we want them to be or not! You know that program that orders pizza from Dominos?! Yes, even that program is a proof of something. Find out what it proves on this episode of Picture Me Coding!LinksNathan Mull's personal ...

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55:15

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Frances Allen...

Picture Me Coding ·

2025/01/08

This week Mike and Erik discussed the work of Frances Allen, who worked for IBM for 45 years starting in 1957. The first female Turing Award winner, Allen authored a number of papers on compiler optimizations that describe techniques that are still in use! Send us a text

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70:36

We Read the News and Everyone’s On Drugs

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/12/18

In this episode we looked at the tragic story of tech company CEOs doing drugs and the various knock-on effects.We also played a lightning round of "Aspiring to be a nation state or on drugs?" with various headlines.This is the final episode of Picture Me Coding for 2024 and we’ll be taking a break for a few weeks after this. But we’ll be back next year!Mike made a playlist of all the music we talked about this year too! Find it here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6jbM32yzvi8MK3zv2cXPSr?s...

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56:13

More Favorites: Radix Trees, Kadane's, Raft Leader...

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/12/11

We carried over from last week and kept doing algos! This week we talked about:- Diffie Hellman- Radix Trees: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/321479.321481- Kadane's Algorithm- Raft's Leader Election: https://raft.github.io/raft.pdfSend us a text

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50:06

Our Favorite Algorithms: FFTs and Hyperloglogs!

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/12/04

Mike wanted to talk about our favorite algorithms this week, so we covered a few:- Fast Fourier Transforms- HyperloglogSome references are below:- Article in Communications of the ACM: What Is an Algorithm?- Al-Khwarizmi (mathematician, wikipedia page)- HyperLogLog Paper: https://algo.inria.fr/flajolet/Publications/FlFuGaMe07.pdfSend us a text

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51:41

Time Revisited: Wacky Timezones, Untrustworthy...

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/11/27

In this episode, Mike and Erik go back to the topic of time in order to explore what is specifically frustrating to programmers about dealing with time. Why's it so hard and annoying? And why do people get so irritated when we ask them a bunch of questions about what they really want us to build with respect to time?We also mentioned on this and our last episode that there are some new ways to reach out to us (in addition to our email address), but they are:- Bluesky account: https://bsky.app...

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59:07

Into the Well of Formal Verifications

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/11/20

This week Mike and Erik were trying to understand the arena of formal verification: what are these tools? Where do they come from? How do they work? Can we categorize them?There's a ton of stuff to talk about in this area and we're just learning the things, so we made an attempt here to wade in and figure stuff out!We also mentioned on this episode that there are some new ways to reach out to us (in addition to our email address), but they are:- Bluesky account: https://bsky.app/profile/pictu...

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47:55

"Some of the most valuable people I work with are...

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/11/13

Our discussion with Randy Edwards from last week carried over to the following week in this part 2 episode of our discussion on software engineering management. Our wide-ranging discussion included references to James Bond and Billy Woods and all kinds of unexpected stuff in between.Announcement Part 2: In celebration of episiode 50, Picture Me Coding now has a threadless shop with shirts, stickers, and coffee mugs for purchase! Impress your friends with your knowledge of the niche podcast sp...

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40:37

Software Engineering Management with Randy Edwards

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/11/06

This week we took on the subject of software engineering management and we were joined in this discussion by Randy Edwards, who started writing C++ at 16 and now runs an organization with software engineering managers reporting to him. Randy shares wisdom he's learned along the way and Mike and Erik try to interrogate the goals and methods of management.Announcement: In celebration of episiode 50, Picture Me Coding now has a threadless shop with shirts, stickers, and coffee mugs for purc...

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47:48

Mike and Erik Vie for the Nobel Prize in Literature

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/10/30

Recently, some people won a Nobel Prize in Physics for contributions in the field of Neural Networks and Mike went down this huge rabbit hole of content-addressable-memory and Hopfield Networks and Geoffrey Hinton's work on the Boltzmann machine. If you feel lost in this episode, let Mike be your guide (and you may be less lost than Erik).Send us a text

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51:04

Nostalgia for the 90s Internet

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/10/23

This week Mike and Erik wax nostalgic about the early days of the internet and then they wonder if all this trite nostalogizing (is that a word?) isn't really a dangerous or simply not-useful self-deception. Was stuff really better in the early days of the internet? What do you think? Check out some links:- https://web.archive.org/- profile of Jake Nickell from 2011 in the Chicago Reader- Cory Doctorow's now-famous blogpost in Wired on "enshitiffication"Send us a text

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58:31

Origin Story: How Erik Became a Programmer

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/10/09

In this episode Mike wanted to interview Erik on how he got his start as a programmer and he was surprised by this and all worked up about it by the end. Hear tales of Erik's journey in this episode.Send us a text

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56:43

620 Million Years Ago the Workday Was Only 6 Hours Long

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/09/25

In this episode of Picture Me Coding, your hosts take on the topic of time, a category of discussion that it turns out they are supremely not up to the task of at all. Join us for this conversational and occasionally confused discussion.Some Links- Distributed Systems textbook by Marten van Steen- Wikipedia on ΔT (timekeeping)- Wikipedia on the leap second- Keeping Time at NISTSend us a text

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80:10

Software In Pop Culture with Amy Salley

Picture Me Coding ·

2024/09/18

This week we were fortunate to have a super special guest, Amy Salley, who hails from the podcast Hugo Girl. Amy agreed to come on the show to talk to us about depictions of software in science fiction and we discussed works such as:A recently published short story by Naomi Kritzer called "Better Living Through Algorithms" (read it here).2001: A Space Odyssey the 1968 Kubrick filmWar Games the 1983 filmNeuromancer by William GibsonLinks!Hugo Girl Episode ListBetter Living Throu...

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