Programming Throwdown

Intro topic: Asymmetric Returns

News/Links:

NanoChat by Andrej Karpathyhttps://github.com/karpathy/nanochat

Pydantic AIhttps://www.marktechpost.com/2025/03/25/pydanticai-advancing-generative-ai-agent-development-through-intelligent-framework-design/

1000th Starlink this yearhttps://spaceflightnow.com/2025/05/16/live-coverage-spacex-plans-morning-launch-of-starlink-satellites-from-california/

ChatGPT Apps SDKhttps://openai.com/index/introducing-apps-in-chatgpt/

Book of the Show
PatrickThe Will of the Many by James Islingtonhttps://amzn.to/43IfU8Q

JasonInterview with DHH (Founder of Ruby on Rails)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vagyIcmIGOQ

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show
PatrickFactoriohttps://www.factorio.com/ 

Jasonnip.io 

Topic: Workflow Orchestrators

WhyBatch jobs (embarrassingly parallel)
Long-running tasks (e.g. transcoding video)
Checkpointing/resuming

HowMessage Queues
Containerization
Worker Pools & Autoscaling
History & Backfill

Steps to run workflows:Containerize the workflow definition and send to the cloud
Containerize all the individual tasks
Submit job(s)

ExamplesAirflowLegacy but dominant

DagsterGreat UX for python developers

Temporal: https://temporal.io/The new hotness

RayLow-level but very powerful

KubeflowDesigned for ML workflows, integrated dashboard

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184: Asynchronous Programming

Intro topic: AI Scams

News/Links:

Coding Adventure: Ray-Tracing Glass and Caustics (Sebastian Lague)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA1KVZ1eOuA

Boson AI announces Higgs Audio V2https://www.boson.ai/technologies/voice 

The Misconception that Almost Stopped AI [How Models Learn Part 1] (Welch Labs)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrO20Jb-hy0

A mind-bending conversation with Peter Thielhttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/podcasts/interesting-times-a-mind-bending-conversation-with-peter-thiel.html

Book of the Show
PatrickThe Hobbit (JRR Tolkien)https://amzn.to/4mevuzE

JasonNYT Word Games

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show
PatrickEscape Academyhttps://escapeacademygame.com/en

JasonMulti-modal LLMs to make calendar meetingswww.chatgpt.com

Topic: Asynchronous Computing

What/WhyMulti-threading in between the lines
Many of the benefits of multiprocessing without the overhead/complexity

HowCoroutines
Thread-Local Memory
Blocking vs Non-Blocking operationsBlocking: arithmetic
Non-Blocking: Reading from the network card into thread-local memory

Interpreter lockingTypescript: Single threaded
Python: GIL

ImplementationsPolling (not-Asynchronous)
Callbacks (interrupts)
Multithreading (with queues/message passing)
Promise/Futures
Async/Await 

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00:00:00 Intro
00:01:58 Introducing Mark Cunningham
00:07:01 How Do You Find A Job?
00:15:43 How to Get the Best Interview
00:33:06 Tips on How To Pass An Interview
00:38:38 How to Have a Good Interview
00:48:12 What is the Reverse Interview?
00:54:24 What Is The Hiring Manager's Role?
00:57:12 Reverse Interviews: Red Flags
01:14:45 How to Negotiate a Tech Offer
01:23:02 When to Negotiate Your Compensation
01:35:21 Interview Horror Stories
01:39:29 How Do You Deal With Fake AI Applicants?
01:45:32 The Bidding Network

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Intro topic: Getting an entry-level job

News/Links:

Mario Kart 64 Fully Decompiledhttps://gbatemp.net/threads/mario-kart-64-decompilation-project-reaches-100-completion.671104/

Q-Learning is not yet scalablehttps://seohong.me/blog/q-learning-is-not-yet-scalable/

Grover’s Algorithmhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQWpF2Gb-gU&vl=en

OrangePi has a RISC-V SBChttps://linuxgizmos.com/orangepi-rv2-a-cost-effective-risc-v-board-with-m-2-2280-slot-and-dual-gigabit-ethernet/

Book of the Show
PatrickThe Will of the Many (James Islington)https://amzn.to/44Dznsz

JasonThe Intelligence Traphttps://amzn.to/3TqoKCB

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show
Patrick Pokemon Odysseyhttps://www.reddit.com/r/PokemonROMhacks/comments/1l9zdta/pok%C3%A9mon_odyssey_final_release/

JasonNetflix Gameshttps://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=6891422865930303475&hl=en_US

Topic: 

WhySpeed up development
Catch errors faster than type checking/compiling
Writing tedious boilerplate code
Ask questions and learn local information
Look good for hiring managers

HowExtensions for VSCode & other IDEs for inline suggestions
Chat with a selection/file
Command-line Tools run at the root directory
Local vs Cloud

ExamplesCopilot (VSCode extension)Use the experimental mode

Cursor (Custom IDE)Jumps to suggest changes in other places
Similar to copilot experimental mode

RooCode (VSCode extension)

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Intro topic: Video Game Prices

News/Links:

Step one: Jump in the Lava - Abyssofthttps://youtu.be/WdadpHLAfdA?si=oXYnhB0EdkR_RaPE

Scalable world models for continuous controlhttps://www.tdmpc2.com/

Clever code is probably the worst code you could write - Engineer’s Codexhttps://read.engineerscodex.com/p/clever-code-is-probably-the-worst

A new, open source text-to-speech model called Dia has arrived to challenge ElevenLabs, OpenAI and morehttps://venturebeat.com/ai/a-new-open-source-text-to-speech-model-called-dia-has-arrived-to-challenge-elevenlabs-openai-and-more/

Book of the Show
PatrickThe Muscle Ladder - Jeff Nippardhttps://amzn.to/44Dznsz

JasonMetaphysics of Warhttps://amzn.to/4jMjvZ5

Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h

Tool of the Show
PatrickPokemon Trading Card Game Pocket

JasonPhi-4https://huggingface.co/spaces/microsoft/phi-4-multimodal

Topic: Memory Management

MotivationAvoid thrashing / crashes
Allocate resources efficiently
Keep high uptime

WhereOS LevelHeap management
Virtual Memory

Language/Compiler LevelCpp
Garbage collection
Ownership

ToolsInstrumentationExport to Datadog / Grafana

Python: psutil & tracemalloc
Valgrind

What to do when your program uses too much memory?Reduce data sizesCompression
References
Lazy initializer
Generators & Back Pressure

Ring buffers
Arena allocators
Disk based caching

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