Ammar Mian is a software engineer and the co-founder of startup health tech company Malla - and another former student of Oz's and Bradfield School of Computer Science! Many software engineers daydream about starting their own company one day, so we've got Ammar on the show this week to give us the goods. Is it still fun? Can you still get into flow? Are you still coding? Does Oz want to die on Mars? All this and more!Shownotes:MallaThe WigglesThe Six Levels of Interaction with a SystemZone of proximal developmentRed-bellied black snakeReentry [book] - more recent history of SpaceXRed Mars [book] - Kim Stanley Robinson
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E21: Make the easy things harder (with Madison Kanna)
Madison Kanna is a lifelong learner and self-taught programmer who learns in public, and Madison joins Oz and Charlie to share tactics for getting things done (with their learning goals) - and the importance of having fun along the way when learning computer science.ShownotesMadison Kanna's siteThe Cost of Forsaking CFlow - Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiRyan Holiday - Don't Talk about Writing a Novel
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E20: Jason Benn's path to ML engineering
Jason Benn is an ML engineer and truly the epitome of a lifelong learner (Cal Newport even wrote about Jason in one of his books on learning!). Oz and Charlie catch up with Jason on his current self-directed ML sabbatical - which he's corralled into a co-working cohort called mleclub.com (similar to Recurse Center but with an ML / AI focus). We discuss the tactical, strategic, and emotional side to effective self-directed learning, and close out with a new segment tentatively called "Would you read the top article on Hacker News right now?".ShownotesMinerva University [book] So Good They Can't Ignore You - Cal Newport[book] Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned - Kenneth O. O. Stanley, Joel LehmanJason Benn's website MLE Club
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E19: When failure is not an option
Does your summer roadtrip across America include Saturn V Rockets, self-driving cars, dinosaur bones, and maybe Kittyhawk? Well, then you might be Oz and family! Charlie and Oz catch up on Oz's grand tour of America's inspiring hubs of ambition and technology, with plenty of detouring into the wonderful book genre of video game memoirs.Shownotes[book] Failure Is Not An Option - Gene Kranz[book] Skunkworks - Ben Rich[book] The Wright Brothers - David McCullough[book] Masters of Doom - David Kushner[documentary] Indie Game the Movie[book] Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games[book] The Making of Prince of Persia - Jordan Mechner[book] Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Tomorrow - Gabrielle Zevin[song] "This song wrote itself" - Charlie's song about self-driving cars, performed in a self-driving car Hack Club's "Blot" pen plotter Hack Club
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E18: Do you love programming as much as Thorsten Ball does?
Programming is the best! We're chatting with Thorsten Ball (self-published author of Writing an Interpreter in Go and Writing a Compiler in Go) about all of our mutual favorite topics: learning new stuff, great textbooks, writing, and why bugs are actually great (a gift, even!).ShownotesWriting an Interpreter in Go (Thorsten's book): Writing a Compiler in Go (Thorsten's book) The Dragon Book (compilers)Thorsten's newsletter: Thorsten's website Zed.dev Sourcegraph