120 episodes

Episodes

Every Happy Path Programming conversation, newest first.

#119

FP Reaches the Masses

We chat with Paul Snively ( ) about how Functional Programming has gone mainstream.Resources- Winter Tech Forum - Paul Snively's LambdaConf Talk on Verse - Paul Snively's Blog Post on the Verse Calculus - Eugenio Moggi, "Notions of Computation and Monads" (1991) - "Implementing L

πŸ—“ Jan 24, 2026⏱ 1h 29m
#118

Effects of 2025

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

Bruce & James recap the technology shifts of 2025 and look ahead to what may be ahead in 2026. Resources: Register for the Winter Tech Forum (March 2-6 2026 in Crested Butte, Colorado) The Eternal Return of Abstraction: Why Programming Was Never About Code Thinking in Types javad

πŸ—“ Jan 02, 2026⏱ 1h 11m
#116

Infrastructure as Effects

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is "code" but without most of the benefits of being code. Sam Goodwin is reinventing IaC with Alchemy and an upcoming Alchemy Effect project which aims to manage infrastructure dependencies & provisioning in the same way we manage requirements in Effe

πŸ—“ Sep 19, 2025⏱ 58m 57s
#114

ty: Fast Python Type Checking

Carl Meyer works on the ty Python type checker, built in Rust by Astral the creators of Ruff and uv. We chat about type systems, the evolution of static typing in Python, and the focus on performance. Resources: Richard Feldman: Roc compiler moving from Rust to Zig

πŸ—“ Jul 25, 2025⏱ 1h 05m

Winter Tech Forum and Current Projects

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

Join us at the 2025 Winter Tech Forum! www.wintertechforum.com Projects Mentioned uv for Python TypeScript Effect Pkl CloudFormation Extras Pkl GitHub Actions Other Episodes Mentioned #81 TypeScript & Effects with Michael Arnaldi #97 The Pkl Configuration Language with Philip HΓΆl

πŸ—“ Jan 30, 2025⏱ 43m 58s

The Joy of Programming

We chat with Dave Thomas, co-author of The Pragmatic Programmer, about the joy of programming and the tensions between our and others needs.

πŸ—“ Dec 30, 2024⏱ 1h 09m

Agile Organizations

Jutta Eckstein is expanding the concepts of Agile to be a company-wide model, instead of a niche process for software developers. We chat with her about the book "Company-wide Agility with Beyond Budgeting, Open Space & Sociocracy" which she co-authored on this subject. For more

πŸ—“ Dec 03, 2024⏱ 1h 04m

Effect Oriented Programming: The Book

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

After 4 years in development, our book is out! Along with our friend and lead-author, Bill Frasure, we we discuss the book, its motivation and the process we used to create it. Now available in digital and print forms at: effectorientedprogramming.com At the end of the episode we

πŸ—“ Oct 07, 2024⏱ 58m 21s

AI Augmented Programming

Stephan Janssen is always on the bleeding edge of both helping developers grow and with how he uses technology to accomplish amazing things. He led the creation of Devoxx but is a coder at heart. Stephan shares his journey with AI, both as a "library" in his applications and also

πŸ—“ Aug 20, 2024⏱ 1h 07m

Thinking about Thinking

Diana Montalion teaches us about Systems Thinking and why it matters for those of us building software. Diana is founder of Mentrix, which teaches "systems architecture skills for an increasingly complex world." Pre-Order Diana's book: Learning Systems Thinking: Essential Nonline

πŸ—“ Jun 18, 2024⏱ 1h 31m

The Agile Illusion

We chat with Trond Hjorteland about Agile and why it hasn't led to successful outcomes in many traditional organizations. Mentioned and related resources Trond & JoΓ£o Rosa's training on Agile + DP2 Open Systems Theory LinkedIn Group for Open Systems Theory More material on Open S

πŸ—“ Jun 10, 2024⏱ 55m 54s

Continuous Deployment

We chat with Valentina Servile about her upcoming book on Continuous Deployment and reducing the risks to keeping HEAD not just always deployable, but automatically deployed to production. Book for preorder on Amazon: Continuous Deployment: Enable Faster Feedback, Safer Releases,

πŸ—“ Apr 21, 2024⏱ 1h 06m

Compassionate Coding

We chat with April Wensel, founder of Compassionate Coding, about helping programmers bring more compassion to themselves and others. Resources Confessions of a Recovering Jerk Programmer Marshall Rosenberg - Nonviolent Communication Kristin Neff - Self-Compassion Karen Armstrong

πŸ—“ Mar 22, 2024⏱ 59m 13s

Nerd Sniping via the 1B Row Challenge

When Gunnar Morling announced the 1 Billion Row Challenge a few weeks ago, he had no idea it'd go crazy viral. Resources Challenge details: www.morling.dev/blog/one-billion-row-challenge Rust 1BRC Blog: aminediro.com/posts/billion_row/ Cliff Click's implementation walkthrough: ww

πŸ—“ Jan 19, 2024⏱ 59m 06s

Virtual Threads Looming

We chat with Adam Warski about Loom, Virtual Threads, and his Loom-based Scala library, Ox, for structured concurrency & Go-Like Channels. Referenced articles & code Ox EasyRacer Client Go statement considered harmful Go-like selects using jox channels in Java Limits of Loom's pe

πŸ—“ Jan 12, 2024⏱ 1h 07m

The Best Manager

Most of us have managers but they aren't always great. We chat with James' best manager, Sushila Sahay, about what makes her such a great manager. We also dive a bit into open source business models since Sushila has deep experience in that realm.

πŸ—“ Dec 15, 2023⏱ 44m 42s

Developers Thriving In the Flow

Arty Starr is a PhD student and entrepreneur focused on helping developers thrive. We chat about her research on developer momentum and ways that developers can find joy through more time in the flow state. Referenced resources SpringOne Talk Arty's Idea Flow Book FlowInsight

πŸ—“ Oct 20, 2023⏱ 1h 15m

Scala, Rust, and Durable Computing

Our chat with John De Goes starts with his Scala & Rust journeys, then goes into Golem Cloud, a serverless durable computing platform underpinned by Wasm, and ends with a discussion about whether business applications really need parallelism.

πŸ—“ Sep 15, 2023⏱ 1h 19m

Inevitable Failure

We chat with Dormain Drewitz about failure and reliability. Ironically our recording software crashed near the end of the episode but we recovered and wrapped things up. Referenced Article: 10 Years of Failure Friday at PagerDuty: Fostering Resilience, Learning and Reliability

πŸ—“ Sep 06, 2023⏱ 1h 09m

Rust Developer Retreat & Structured Concurrency

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

At the Rust Developer Retreat we explored Structured Concurrency with Tokio. With the attendees we chat about our projects and things learned, liked, and disliked about Rust. Then dive into Structured Concurrency generally and specific implementations.

πŸ—“ Aug 21, 2023⏱ 58m 12s

Functional Programming in Kotlin

Simon Vergauwen shares about Arrow, a collection of Functional Programming libraries for Kotlin. Β Sincere apologies for Bruce & James' bad audio. Β We forgot to change our input device but figured we'd still publish this as it is tolerable and Simon has so much good stuff to say.

πŸ—“ Dec 01, 2022⏱ 1h 03m

Polymorphism Unbound

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

Bruce continues his archaeological dig into the foundations of mainstream programming. Referenced blog: Why Are There Functions?

πŸ—“ Sep 30, 2022⏱ 1h 07m

Swallowed by a Python

Finally Bruce gets a whole episode about Python with our friend Luciano Ramalho, author of Fluent Python. Β In the words of Luciano "Thanks James and Bruce for the most enjoyable podcast panel I ever had!"

πŸ—“ Aug 31, 2022⏱ 1h 23m

ZIO 2 dot Ohhhhh!

Our co-author on Effect Oriented Programming, Bill Frasure, joins us to chat about his programming journey and his involvement in last week's ZIO 2.0 release. Book repo

πŸ—“ Jul 01, 2022⏱ 1h 26m

Compassionate Communities

Tonya Moore has been helping build developer communities for years. We discuss how to deal with jerks and the importance of building on a foundation of compassion. Referenced blog from Bill Venners

πŸ—“ May 13, 2022⏱ 1h 04m

Open Source: Free as in Hot Dogs (With Donald Fischer)

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

Open Source is an essential foundation for pretty much everything. How do we fund it appropriately? What do we do about Log4Shell-types of issues? Β Donald Fischer of Tidelift joins us to discuss these economic and human issues.

πŸ—“ Jan 21, 2022⏱ 1h 01m

The Future of Everything

Paul Snively helps us see the future of programming. Spoiler: It's Typed & Functional. Referenced talks Types vs. Tests: An Epic Battle? Type Systems - The Good, Bad and Ugly

πŸ—“ Aug 14, 2021⏱ 1h 17m

The Freedom of Structured Unconferences

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

Bruce describes his multi-decade journey running conferences and how letting go of control, while still having a structure, has led to conferences where attendees connect in meaningful ways.

πŸ—“ Aug 06, 2021⏱ 53m 09s

Rethinking "Thinking in Objects"

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

Object Oriented Programming might just be a series of solutions to self-created problems.

πŸ—“ Jul 02, 2021⏱ 1h 02m

Contemplating Computer Cognition

Bruce and James chat with their friend Julie Amundson about AI, Machine Learning, and many related complexities. Β They explore what the journey is like for Data Scientists at medium / large companies where everything from data access to productionizing models, has challenges. Β Al

πŸ—“ May 18, 2021⏱ 1h 01m

PREP - Performant, Reliable, Expressive, and Productive

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

Bruce, James, and their friend Bill are working on a new book about systems that are Performant, Reliable, Expressive, and Productive. This episode explores those themes with some significant detours along the way.

πŸ—“ Apr 30, 2021⏱ 59m 09s

Vulnerability & Additive Hiring

Bruce & James have a delightful chat with long-time friend Dianne Marsh about changing tech culture to be more vulnerable and diverse. Note: The Non-Violent Communication trainer mentioned in the episode is Karl Steyaert.

πŸ—“ Apr 02, 2021⏱ 1h 04m

The Problem with Gradle; Java 11; SemVer Isn't

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

Bruce and James have struggled with Gradle for years and Bruce this week blogged about some of his gripes: The Problem with Gradle. This prompted a lengthy response from CΓ©dric Champeau. James has mostly stuck to Java 8 and Bruce is exploring Java 11. Finally, James rants about S

πŸ—“ Jan 07, 2021⏱ 1h 08m

Kotlin for Scala Devs. Reflection is the Devil. Meta-Programming.

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

James, as a Scala "True Believer," talks about his experiences with Kotlin and how they compare to Scala. Then he switches gears to rant about runtime reflection which leads to a deeper conversation about meta-programming and alternatives to runtime reflection.

πŸ—“ Dec 19, 2020⏱ 1h 07m

Poly-Polymorphism

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

Most developers have been exposed to inheritance based polymorphism but there are other ways to deal with overlapping functionality. In this episode we talk about ad-hoc polymorphism, parametric polymorphism, and type classes.

πŸ—“ Dec 04, 2020⏱ 1h 01m

Small talk about Smalltalk

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

Our friend Joey Gibson joins us to talk about Smalltalk, the well known grandfather of Object Oriented Programming. Β James is assigned some homework to get a Smalltalk web app running on Google Cloud Run, which he did (after recording). Check out the source

πŸ—“ Oct 30, 2020⏱ 1h 06m

Why Adopt New Technology? And Monads! Monads! Monads!

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

What are the reasons to adopt or migrate to a new technology? Β What prevents you from doing so? Β We explore that question and the differences between green-field and brown-field. Β Then we finally dive deep into Monads trying to conquer the Curse of the Monad.

πŸ—“ Sep 29, 2020⏱ 56m 29s

More Kotlin!

πŸŽ™οΈ Bruce & James

In episode 2 we continue the conversation about Kotlin, things we enjoy and things that could be better.

πŸ—“ Sep 14, 2020⏱ 59m 23s