One of the biggest goals of this show — our raisin detour, if you will — is to encourage people to look at computer programming differently. It's not just a job, or a way to make the computer do what you want. Code isn't just the material you sculpt into apps and games and websites. The very act of programming itself, and the languages we make and …

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss fitness tech like heart rate monitors and Strava and Dance Dance Revolution. In the news, Tik Tok has a dubious deal to keep operating in the US and the regime has plans for the algorithm. Also go see Perfect Blue remastered while you can. And read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Related Links Forum Thre…

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about specific mice. Mice we've used over the years, since the days of balls. In the news, Google dodges consequences in the US but not in the EU, Google is sued yet again for their advertising monopoly, and Google is looking to flood the phone lines of tiny businesses. Related Links Forum Thread Specific Mice Discord…

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about the modern marvel that is video chat. In the news, Perplexity is using undeclared crawlers to scrape content, Samsung has a crazy Micro LED TV, real life ad block is possible, and Trump is forming the American SS. The next GeekNights Book Club book will be The Running Man, by Richard Backman, who you may know be…

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss audio interfaces. Rym uses a PreSonus Studio 1810c to record GeekNights, and as his general purpose "sound card" in the studio. In the news, the CEO of GitHub steps down, you can consider Forgejo if that worries you, Reddit will block the Internet Archive, and Trump illegally forces the National Guard to deploy to …

A classic "80-year predictions" episode. How did we do, humanity? Here's the article (free with ads): As We May Think Links $ Patreon We're considering changing The Name of the FoC community, podcast, et cetera. Transatlantic Accent, and all the ships at sea. This episode's advertisements: Ex-Lax, Mifflin, et cetera. The New Media Reader is a good …

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider why there, broadly, aren't major consumer technology developments lately. In the news, Debian reduces support for i386 and Chrome OS is combining with Android. Also we'll be live at PAX West! Related Links Forum Thread Why there's no big tech news Discord Chat Why there's no big tech news Bluesky Post Why there's …

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the blinky lights and LEDs the kids are putting on everything including their computers. In the news, Windows 10 has extended security support, Broadcom is desperate to monetize VMware, and the EU forced Apple to comply, at least in the EU. Related Links Forum Thread Blinky Lights Discord Chat Blinky Lights Bluesk…

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider toilets, washlets, and bidets. (Oh my). In the news, some context on the current Iran conflict, and Apple WWDC25 was mostly uneventful other than keeping old devices going for a while yet. Related Links Forum Thread Toilets and Bidets and Washlets Discord Chat Toilets and Bidets and Washlets Bluesky Post Toilets a…

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss capacity management. It's changed a lot over the years. In the news, evil people are trying to accelerate climate change, and a silly camera is coming. Related Links Forum Thread Capacity Management Discord Chat Capacity Management Bluesky Post Capacity Management Things of the Day Rym - Lemmings: How DMA Design Re…

You know Alan Turing, right? And the Turing test? Have you actually read the paper that introduced it, Computing Machinery and Intelligence? No?! You… you are not prepared. With very special guest: Felienne Hermans Notes $ Patreon Mystery AI Hype Theatre 3000 podcast, from Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna. "Always read the footnotes" [The Language Ga…

Tonight on GeekNights, we muse a bit on the problem of discoverability. Nearly all experience is mediated, and this includes deciding what web site to look at. In the news, Rym is back from Zenkaikon, Moon Zooz is continuing to rock it, the cosmological constant might not be, niri is a scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor, and US Defense Secretary …

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about MIDI. The Musical Instrument Digital Interface, which is still in use today. In the news, Donkey Kong ‘94 is re-released on Switch, Youtube adds translated dubbing, and Ontario (rightly) taxes Americans using their energy. Related Links Forum Thread MIDI Discord Chat MIDI Bluesky Post MIDI Things of the Day Wate…

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider Windows 11 and the fools who refuse to upgrade. In the news, the iPhone 16e arrives, Gmail is (correctly) dropping SMS two-factor, Twitch is capping uploads for 0.5% of streamers, and Germany represents a profound realignment of global politics. Related Links Forum Thread Windows 11 Discord Chat Windows 11 Bluesky…

In the academic field of programming language research, there are a few prestigious conferences that you must present at to advance in your career. These conferences are rather selective about which presentations they'll accept. If your research work involves proving formal properties about a programming language, you'll have their ear. But if your…

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss electronic payments. We grew up in a world where credit cards were imprinted on carbon paper and cheques were on physical paper. In the news, the Baltics have disconnected from the Russian power grid, Football Manager 25 will be skipped, and there's one weird trick to stop Google's terrible AI summaries. Related Li…

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider all the ways to sell software. From shareware to software-as-a-service to "just buying it" it's evolved quite a bit over the years. In the news, CES happened, Republicans killed net neutrality, and Pornhub is blocked in the entire US south. Also we will be live at MAGFest, which is imminently about to sell out. Re…

"Is the whole universe a computer?", ask Jack Copeland, Mark Sprevak, and Oron Shagrir in chapter 41 of the book The Turing Guide. They split this question in two, first asking whether the universe itself is a computer, then whether the universe could even be computed. These are lofty, unanswerable questions, sure, but they encroach on our territor…

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about Terminals. From the VT100 to any modern Terminal Emulator, they are still a part of the computing world and are worth knowing about. In the news, Jimmy Carter has died at 100, Chinese state-sponsored hackers attacked the US Treasury, and a hero has defeated a fake Nintendo lawyer. Related Links Discord Chat Term…

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about drones. In the news, the common clay of the New West think they're seeing nefarious drones everywhere and we have WordPress vs WP Engine. Related Links Forum Thread Drones Discord Chat Drones Bluesky Post Drones Things of the Day Rym - 1-900-490-FREAK Scott - Elevator Music…

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider blogging. In the news, Roblox is making a closed ecosystem Discord competitor, the US gave Intel a pile of money, and Intel's CEO hit the bricks. Rym has also consolidated all of his social media into rym.social and talks about how he set up cross-posting across microblog, Mastodon, and Bluesky. Related Links Foru…

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about widgets. Mostly status and telemetry widgets that people like to put on their desktops or their phones. They have their uses, but are usually useless. In the news, Cloudplane is shutting down in December, Adobe's Project Turntable is stunning, and Tesla's robots were (obviously) fake. If you are able to vote in …

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about cores and concurrency and threads and such. Also Rym and Emily fought a bear. In the news, Intel's chip instability saga has concluded, and Python 3.13.0 is pretty good. Related Links Forum Thread Multicore Multiprocess Concurrency and Such Discord Chat Multicore Multiprocess Concurrency and Such Things of the D…

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the evils of web trackers and analytics. They are used almost exclusively to feed the ad industry and you should block them wherever possible. Rym has installed the microcode patch for some Intel chips and you should too if you have one of them. In the news, Microsoft is moving to a security-first posture, nostalg…

Alexander Repenning created AgentSheets, an environment to help kids develop computational thinking skills. It wrapped an unusual computational model with an even more unusual user interface. The result was divisive. It inspired so many other projects, whilst being rejected at every turn and failing to catch on the way Scratch later did. So in 2017…

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the sad state of the technology creeping into car dashboards. In the news, the US Supreme Court has disastrously ruled that the president is above the law in extreme and shocking complicity with authoritarian takeover. In other news, some good Python development practices and Apple cramming AI into their largely f…

If you're anything like Ivan (oof, sorry), you've heard of Pygmalion but never caught more than the gist. Some sort of project from the early 70s, similar to Sketchpad or Smalltalk or something, yet another promising prototype from the early history of our field that failed to take the world by storm. Our stock-in-trade on this show. But you've pro…

Tonight on GeekNights, it's a Tech News Roundup! Mouse movers are getting people fired but are also a sign of late stage capitalism, social media is messing up the kids, don't operate your i9 at turbo voltages when it's overheating, Adobe is mostly wrong here but also read what you buy, this is a good car that will never reach the US, data breaches…

Tonight on GeekNights, we make some technology predictions for one, five, and ten years into the future. We did this once back in 2010. In the news, Ticketmaster and Santander have massive data breaches, Google accidentally published its secret search sauce, Twitter adds pornography, and Rubin is the next generation AI chip. Related Links Forum Thr…

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss markup languages like Markdown. In the news, Rym posted an analysis of strange noises in Sportsnet NHL streams, the ship that broke Baltimore Harbor has been removed, you can read a paper exploring The consequences of generative AI for online knowledge communities, and there are new iPads. Related Links Forum Threa…

Tonight on GeekNights we talk about when technology fails. Dead PSUs, dead hard drives, and the like. In the news, there is a vulnerability in practically all VPNs and Tesla is firing everybody after they fired a bunch of people. Related Links Forum Thread Technology Failures Discord Chat Technology Failures Things of the Day Rym - Why Stomping Wig…

Tonight on GeekNights we consider what A New TV in 2024 looks like. In the news, the Stanley Cup Playoffs are underway, GameCube and Wii emulators won't work on iOS due to Apple's ban on just-in-time compilation, and Meta really makes money from all the data they collect about you. Related Links Forum Thread A New TV in 2024 Discord Chat A New TV i…

Inventing on Principle Stop Drawing Dead Fish The Future of Programming Yes, all three of them in one episode. Phew! Links $ patreon.com/futureofcoding — Lu and Jimmy recorded an episode about Hest without telling me, and by total coincidence released it on my birthday. Those jerks… make me so happy. Lu's talk at SPLASH 2023: Cellpond: Spatial Prog…

Dave Ackley's paper Beyond Efficiency is three pages long. With just these three pages, he mounts a compelling argument against the conventional way we engineer software. Instead of inflexibly insisting upon correctness, maybe allow a lil slop? Instead of chasing peak performance with cache and clever tricks, maybe measure many times before you cut…

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the ramifications of a ridiculous Texas law being argued before the Supreme Court, and its ramifications for the imperfect but valuable Section 230. In the news, A lot of Redditors hate the Reddit IPO, Reddit is selling your data to Google for AI training, and Reddit admitted that your moderator protests are worki…

Tonight on GeekNights, 18 years after Rym tried to switch to Mac, Scott switches to Mac. (Except for gaming). In the news, Rym is building a new primary workstation,, Tim Sweeney calls out Apple's "malicious compliance" in light of The Digital Markets Act, and the Superb Owl went to overtime. Related Links Forum Thread Scott Switches to Mac Discord…

In the spirit of clearly communicating what you're signing up for, this podcast episode is nearly three hours long, and among other things it contains a discussion of a paper by author Mary Shaw titled Myths & Mythconceptions which takes as an organizing principle a collection of myths that are widely believed by programmers, largely unacknowledged…

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss the vicious smartphone upgrade cycle. Try to use your phone for more than a year or two at least. In the news, Apple has to halt new Apple Watch sales, Adobe gives up on buying Figma, and Scott had fun on the Star Wars ride at Disneyland. Related Links Forum Thread The Smartphone Upgrade Cycle Discord Chat The Smar…

The subject of this episode's paper — Propositions as Types by Philip Wadler — is one of those grand ideas that makes you want to go stargazing. To stare out into space and just disassociate from your body and become one with the heavens. Everything — life, space, time, existence — all of it is a joke! A cosmic ribbing delivered by the laws of the …

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the the idea of remote access. In the news, here's a list of all the tech layoffs so far in 2023, and Twitch changes its simulcasting guidelines. Related Links Forum Thread Remote Access Things of the Day Rym - Star Trek + Design Scott - HomewardRym and Scott - The Front Row Crew által

Go To Statement Considered Harmful is a solid classic entry in the X Considered Harmful metafiction genre, authored by renowned computer scientist and idiosyncratic grump, Edsger Wybe Dijkstra. Surprisingly (given the impact it's had) this is a minuscule speck of a paper, lasting only 1-ish pages, and it even digresses several times from the main p…

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the current state of search engines and why Google increasingly doesn't work anymore. In the news, iOS has multiple zero-day zero-interaction vulnerabilities (update your devices immediately) and Reddit is trying to embrace the worst parts of phpBB. 12 years ago we gave two short talks about how game mechanics (an…

Tonight on GeekNights, in light of Twitter's dying husk removing the ability to block people, we consider the concept of "blocking" in social platforms. The root problem is, as always, the twin evils of advertising and capitalism. In the news, the inability to warn the residents of Maui to the rapidly escalating wildfires requires significant gover…

This community is a big tent. We welcome folks from all backgrounds, and all levels of experience with computers. Heck, on our last episode, we celebrated an article written by someone who is, rounding down, a lawyer! A constant question I ponder is: what's the best way to introduce someone to the world of FoC? If someone is a workaday programmer, …

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss when, how, and if you should upgrade your technology. From phones to cameras to TVs to skis, it comes mostly down to what problem you're trying to solve. In the news, Web Environment Integrity is a potentially worrying but not yet apocalyptic threat to the World Wide Web, the BBC has launched its own journalism Mas…

Tonight on GeekNights, we consider the surprising challenges of throttling and rate limiting. In the news, Twitter rate-limiting reading twitter and broke Tweetdeck while also blocking non-logged-in views , Norway has 100 years of phosphate rock deposits, and the US Supreme Court is wholly illegitimate. Related Links Things of the Day Rym - Dr. Bun…

The execution of code, by its very nature, creates the conditions of a "strong legalism" in which you must unquestioningly obey laws produced without your say, invisibly, with no chance for appeal. This is a wild idea; today's essay is packed with them. In drawing parallels between law and computing, it gives us a new skepticism about software and …

Tonight on GeekNights, we briefly consider when and why to adopt a new technology. In the news, Apple WWDC 2023 brings a $3,500 AR/VR headset in 2024 (we've talked about AR (Augmented Reality) before), and Reddit is pulling a Twitter and possibly destroying the best third party app it has. Related Links Things of the Day Rym - The FIRE TOILET Scott…

This is a normal episode of a podcast called Future of Coding. We talk about INTERCAL, a real tool for computer programming. [Do I need to say more? Will this sell it? Most people won’t have heard of INTERCAL, but I think the fake out “normal” is enough to draw their attention. Also, I find “computer programming” funny. Not sure why I put that in q…

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about the noise that computers make. It used to be a lot worse, but most of you are probably too young to have experienced this era. In the news, Rym went to a Star Trek convention, Google supports passkeys, actually read this article and not just the headline, and Rym is running in the New York Marathon in November! …