Podcast profile
By Adam Gordon Bell - Software Developer
The stories and people behind the code. Hear stories of software development from interesting people.
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53 min
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I texted Don about a side gig: €5,000 for every 1% you shave off a zip file. It's a real contest. For 20 years, Marcus Hutter has offered €500,000 to anyone who can losslessly compress a gigabyte of Wikipedia below 110 megabytes. Gzip gets you to 322. After that you're on your own. So we tried. Run-length encoding. Poi
I've been trying to understand how machine learning actually works. Not use it, understand it, down to the ifs and loops. How does a program built out of plain conditionals get better on its own? So late one night I sent Don a paper. Three words in the title: reward is enough. The claim is that all of intelligence, the
I've been confusing Don with frontier-lab links late at night for a bit. Ilya Sutskever told a NeurIPS audience that pre-training as we know it would unquestionably end. There's only one internet, and the data isn't growing. The frontier labs call this the pre-training wall. A leaked Google memo from 2023 argued they h
Kate Gregory has been writing C++ for over forty years. Books, keynotes, a consulting firm she built from the ground up. At sixty-three, she's one of the most experienced programmers alive. She surveyed hundreds of software engineers about getting older. What scares you? What's changed? What have you lost? The things p
Corey told me about his AI cat reel problem. He found these AI-genearted cat videos hilarious. Who makes these? He kept sending them to his wife. Then he tried to stop watching and he couldn't. So I went down the rabbit hole of how social media algorithms actually work. It starts simple. Upvote, downvote, sort by time.
Multiple VS Code windows. "Agent stopping" in a robot voice. A laptop stand on the treadmill so Claude can keep working while I run. The Big Rich sitting unread by the fireplace while I check if the migration's done. Somewhere along the way, I started reorganizing my life around keeping the machine spinning. Claude Cod
Ron Garret left JPL for a 100-person startup he'd just discovered on Usenet. Four a.m. alarms. Burbank to San Jose on Southwest. A rented room in Susan Wojcicki's house. He expected the search engine engineering and instead he got asked to build ad serving. In Java and with JSPs and no syntax highlighting and no delimi
Imagine facing a problem you can't name, something that feels bigger than any bug you've ever had to fix. How do you debug your own mind when you don't even know what's wrong? Burke Holland's story starts with a college party and a bad trip that leaves a deeper mark than he expects. Sleep gets harder. Fear creeps in. H
What do you do when your code breaks and the only fix is to dig into the runtime below? Matt Godbolt lives for that. Tile-based renderers, color-coded scanlines, zero-copy NICs—each story is a clue that leads past the abstraction to the real machine. He shares the rule that guides him: master your layer, learn the one
What if a software bug drained your savings, ruined your reputation, and nobody believed it wasn't your fault? Scott Darlington took over a village post office, hoping to give his family a steady life. But the software system kept showing cash shortfalls he couldn't explain. Each time, the Post Office told him the numb
A quick update from Adam about the podcast's current state, consistency challenges, and what's coming next. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter
What do we risk when we let AI do the heavy lifting in our coding? Are we giving up the thinking that makes us good at what we do? And as expectations keep rising to match productivy gains, is all this speed really helping, or just making us busier? Today, let's look at the tradeoffs of coding with AI and why the harde
I've always found meaning—and a lot of strength—in building things. Now, with AI coding agents changing the way we work, it's easy to feel threatened, like something essential might get taken away. But honestly, that creative urge can't be replaced by any tool. In this episode, I talk about what it's like when your ide
What if your search for connection took you somewhere you never meant to go—almost costing you everything? John Walker grew up building computers and exploring early internet forums, always looking for a place to fit in. As a teenager, he hacked his school network and spent hours on IRC, but loneliness crept in. Drugs
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where learning felt like an uphill battle? Like no matter how hard you tried, the pieces just wouldn't fall into place? Steve Krouse's story shows the power of the right learning environment. As a child, Steve felt he wasn't good at math. But everything changed with an afters
Can a single line of code change the way we see science, policy, and trust? In this episode we explore the "Climategate" scandal that erupted from leaked emails and code snippets, fueling doubts about climate science. What starts as an investigation into accusations of fraud leads to an unexpected journey through the m
What if a simple game became a gateway to computational breakthroughs? David Freiberg and Felipe set out on a journey to conquer Hatetris, a notoriously difficult JavaScript game. Their interest ignited when a new world record was set, showing that surpassing the game's high score was possible. Their journey was full o
What if internet trolls could become your greatest collaborators? Nolen Royalty discovered this unexpected truth when his simple checkbox game went viral. It began with a school email prank that crashed servers but sparked a philosophy: creative constraints breed innovation. From "Flappy Dird" to "One Million Checkboxe
What if leaving your dream job was the way to discover your true self? Jon de la Motte failed his first Stripe interview, but he didn't give up. It was his dream job, a company that connected with his father's work in finance with his software ambitions. At Stripe, Jon faced challenges. He joined a risky JavaScript inf
What if you had to break life-changing news to your team—could you handle the weight of their futures? Allison's journey from software engineer to compassionate leader at Shopify is filled with challenges and growth. It all started when her mentor was suddenly laid off, leaving her with uncertainty and guilt. This turn
Have you ever known someone who's technical brilliance was overshadowed by personal failings? This is the story of Hans Reiser, a software developer driven to create a superior Linux filesystem, but whose difficult personality got in the way. Then came the disappearance of his wife, Nina, in 2006. The investigation poi
How do you know what matters? What if training to climb Everest left you certain you were on the wrong career path? Join us as we explore Yoshio's incredible journey from the heights of Everest, to coding bootcamps, to finding his true calling in start-ups and communication skills training. Episode Page Support The Sho
What if your corporate job left you feeling empty, and you decided to leap into venture capital? Tim Chen, a software engineer, was disillusioned with corporate life at Microsoft. The 2008 market crash and layoffs deepened his dissatisfaction. Seeking more impactful work, Tim joined startups and contributed to open-sou
Today the tables have turned and you're going to hear someone interview me. Ronak and Guang from the Software Misadventures podcast are going to interview me about podcasting. My history as a software developer and I guess this big idea. That I don't think I've shared too much about the importance of communication. Mor
What if you had to fight against your company's culture to bring a revolutionary tool to life? Meet Jeffrey Snover, the Microsoft architect behind PowerShell, a command tool that transformed Windows system administration. Initially met with skepticism, Snover's idea faced resistance from a company that favored graphica