Tech, Bugs & Rock & Roll

Dylan's on another aeroplane so fellow Linebreaker Hannes joins Mark to talk about positive code reviews and the conversation just kind of rambles on from there really

NASA have decided that the transistors in the Europa Clipper are hardcore enough to survive Jupiter's radiation, plus whatever else we talked about, Spotify lost the upload originally and I can't remember.

Mark's just finished 2 days of selecting and curating talks for NDC London 2025 and shares some tips for persuading committee members to pick you. Dylan's been making courses and trying to juggle 14 other balls at the same time.

CPH DevFest gave us a stage and an audience to record this week's podcast, so we repaid them by doing one of our usual random, meandering conversations.

It's Dylan's birthday and he's spending it doing homework for the Copenhagen Developers' Festival next week. Meanwhile Mark wants to know why developing for Apple hardware is so difficult.

32 episodes! Such a lovely round number that Mark slept through it and Dylan had to fill an hour of airtime on his own, which he does magnificently.

Dylan's on a train this week so the excellent Kevlin Henney joins Mark to talk about legacy code, bitrot, and the inevitable displacement of big, old companies by fast-moving start-ups.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR DEADPOOL AND WOLVERINE

Dylan's getting ready to ship Rockstar 2, Mark's built a sort of electric cloud-based space clipboard, and we've both seen Deadpool and Wolverine and intend to SPOILER THE HECK out of it so if you haven't seen it maybe watch this one later.

Well, gosh, we have absolutely NO IDEA what we might talk about this week in a weekly podcast about the week's events in the world of technology. Not a clue. Nope. Oh, and also a fun bit about the NSA having a tape of Grace Hopper they won't release 'cos they don't have a tape deck to watch it on that we were going to talk about last week but we ran out of time. And Mark and Dylan compare their workstations and monitor arrangements and stuff.

Dylan's been having huge amounts of fun with C#, WASM, Ruby and JavaScript - all at the same time! Mark's been building a new thing, playing with the Meta Quest 3 and finally watching the latest Indiana Jones movie, although not at the same time.

Dylan's been at home working on Rockstar 2 and enjoying Tidal's musical recommendations. Mark's been trying to work with an AMQP API using the wrong PDF document, wondering what a smart ring is, and Ford's turned the Capri into an electric SUV. And folding phones and AR headsets are like super-conducting hoverboards.

Oh no, I completely forgot to upload this episode last week. Sorry. Also the title is what we used on YouTube for the recording but I don't remember talking about Lezer Grammars or Democracy Sausages, although we definitely did talk about quantum crosswords, Arduinos and that scouse baby.

Mark's in Utrecht at Azure Lowlands so Stunt Mark for this episode is author, developer, consultant, thought provoker and occasional Linebreaker Kevlin Henney. Join Kevlin and Dylan as they pick apart what's been happening this week in the weird and wonderful world of technology... and hopefully Human Kevlin will be the ONLY Kevlin on this show, but you never know...

Dylan's been geeking out over a physical music player based on WinAmp, we made some music videos, and the internet's asking what "next Monday" means, which is always good for a laugh. Also we're both taking longer to recover from conferences, is that normal?

The lovely folks at NDC Oslo gave us a whole room and an audience to record this episode. We talk about Apple AI, Elon, and elephants, answer questions from the audience, and Mark reveals a previously unsuspected talent for dog impressions.

This week Dylan and Mark are swamped with getting workshops, talks and music stuff ready for NDC Oslo, but they find time to talk about Agile software development and whether it's good or not, as well as spaceships, GitHub and various other things.

Dylan found his new favourite thing in the entire world, Mark got ratio'd so hard on Twitter that the arithmetic overflowed, and the Windows 10 wallpaper? That's a real photograph! Also introducing a new regular feature (if we ever do it again) and news about Rockstar 2.0!

Mark's playing with GarageBand, Dylan's running Corel Linux, Google Cloud's deleting pension funds, Sam Altman's stealing ScarJo's voice (or is he), and Copilot's probably put AGPL code in every codebase on earth but can anybody prove it? Also there's a new C# compiler called Bflat but C# is Dflat so what's all that about?

A pre-recorded show this week as Dylan and Mark are both off doing exciting things. We talk about our favourite (and not-so-favourite) sci-fi books and authors and add a few to each other's to-read list.

Dylan's on a plane so Eli Holderness joins Mark to talk about tone-deaf Apple ads, functional Fortnite, privilege and neurodivergence.

Mark had to go to Zurich for work so Eli Holderness stepped up and talked to Dylan about whatever they talked about. I don't know, I was in Zurich.

That's right, folks - the right amount of booze makes you a better programmer, according to Science. Also Google has improved JPEG, NASA is talking to Voyager 1 again, and (checks notes) you can now buy a robot dog with a flamethrower attached for less than $10,000 including shipping. What a time to be alive, eh?

A pre-recorded episode because Dylan & Mark are both away this Thursday. We talk about the music we remember from our (very different) formative years, and pick our favourite albums from each decade we've been alive. Mark cheats.

Mark's Framework Laptop 16 is finally mostly working, Dylan's been in Copenhagen reviewing conference abstracts, and everybody else is delving into dynamic landscape... or are they?

This week Mark's solved the Fermi paradox, Dylan's built a teleprompter in JavaScript (twice!), somebody (not us) nearly backdoored every Linux system on the planet, and we just found out laser pointers are illegal in Switzerland.

We said when we got to 100 subscribers we'd have a theme song... well, here it is. Plus we're talking about the Redis license change, Microsoft's new Garnet project, green clouds, racing spreadsheets, and Bad Software Stockholm Syndrome.

Mark's been watching the rocket people launch new rockets, Dylan's been reading about rocket people launching old rockets, and we're talking about the npm ecosystem, building VS Code extensions, and what Disney movies have to do with Iain M. Banks.

(Dylan's house fell off the internet during recording and I implied that I would edit the audio before publishing. I did not edit the audio - M)

(I was going to put a picture of a space chimp on the video thumbnail but then I thought somebody might try to buy it for $25,000, so I didn't - D)

Dylan's been watching people play code golf with Rockstar, and pushing the key on his keyboard that tells him Cortana doesn't exist any more, Mark's been processing a billion rows of data and running FretBadger from a Raspberry Pi in his house, and Google Gemini won't show C++ code to people under 18 because apparently pointer arithmetic isn't safe for kids. What a time to be alive, eh?

Mark & Dylan talk about online advertising (evil), in-ear monitors (good), Beauty in Code in Malmö (good), NCrunch version 5 and JetBrains Rider (great), and Apple deciding they're not going to kill progressive web apps after all, maybe (still a bit evil though).

It's Leap Day! Mark & Dylan talk about leap years, Dylan's proposal for a new calendar system, why you shouldn't use AI to design your Willy Wonka experience, a tool for making your code look terrible, Mark's ongoing adventures with the Framework 16 Laptop, and more.

This week, Mark's been building the Framework 16 laptop, and Dylan's been building Entity Framework Core from source. Neither of them has had much success, but only one of them is now afraid of screwdrivers.

Dylan and Mark talk about the good old days where programs were so small you typed them in every time you needed them, and go off on tangents four or five levels deep. Again.

This week we're talking timezones, post-conference blues - and what if the best way to support sustainable open source is to SHOCK HORROR get a job at Microsoft?

This week Dylan and Mark are at NDC London showing off and geeking out. They are joined by fellow Linebreakers Eli Holderness and Hannes Lowette.

Apologies for the audio quality on this one, it wasn't the ideal recording environment.

Dylan and Mark talk about running coding workshops, mechanical keyboards, estimating, Canon, complicated multi-effect pedals, tabs vs spaces and anything else that comes up.

Dylan and Mark talk about YAML, bugs, contracting and an Invincible Snail that's coming after them.

Dylan and Mark talk about Dylan's new "yak waxing" phrase, being scared when .NET apps upgrade by two versions and just work, and the Horizon Post Office scandal in the UK.