Rock the Code

Daniel Ciocirlan

A podcast about interesting programming topics for the curious software engineer. You will learn about programming languages, tools, libraries, and combinations thereof, from the best in the field.

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  1. 14.11.2025 ·  VIDEO

    9 - Haoyi Li on Mill, Scala at Scale, Conference Touring and Moving Up the Stack

    Haoyi Li is a software engineer and a core contributor to the Scala ecosystem. He's built a whole suite of Scala libraries under the com.lihaoyi banner, focusing on simplicity and productivity, as well as the Mill build tool, which he has since expanded beyond Scala to support other JVM tools like Java and Kotlin and experimental support for other things like TypeScript and Android, and promises better performance and user friendliness than Gradle and Maven can ever match. He's also the author of the book Hands-on Scala Programming, which focuses on getting things done with Scala. You can find Mill at https://mill-build.org/ My own course, Scala Projects, uses Haoyi's book examples as starting points for full-fledged, shippable projects that you can use for yourself or turn into products: https://rockthejvm.com/courses/scala-projects --- 0:00 Intro 1:14 The 45-conference sabbatical tour 4:55 In-person feedback vs. shouting into the void 8:38 Mill's current development process 11:00 Mill beyond Scala: targeting Java and Kotlin 14:05 Why build tools terrify developers 17:07 Mill's YAML config format 22:24 Scala at Databricks: using one language everywhere 26:17 Fast Scala onboarding: no Akka, no CATS, no ZIO 29:04 Scala vs Kotlin, TypeScript, and Go today 30:12 What Scala actually needs: IDE support and a simpler stack 35:56 The async obsession Scala needs to drop 43:10 IC to manager and back: the cost of remote leadership 50:26 From EverQuest XML mods to Scala 1:02:24 Maintaining a library ecosystem without burning out 1:03:30 Open-sourcing Hands-on Scala Programming 1:07:45 Self-publishing the book: pipeline, printing, and margins 1:13:09 Rewriting the book: dropping Quill, evolving Ammonite 1:15:33 Vibe-coding contributions to the Scala compiler 1:22:17 Moving up the stack: engineers in the AI era 1:27:12 The fun of wrangling half-baked code 1:31:38 Haoyi's message to Scala developers

    1 Std. 32 Min.
  2. 29.07.2025 ·  VIDEO

    7 - John De Goes on API Design, Effect Systems, Entrepreneurship and The Ultimate Coder

    John De Goes is a software engineer recognized in the Scala ecosystem for the ZIO effect system. He's the founder of multiple companies, including Ziverge and Golem Cloud, and the producer of the show The Ultimate Coder. He's also a frequent conference speaker, writer and mentor. --- 0:00 Intro 1:45 The Ultimate Coder: humans vs AI in API design 6:26 Judging criteria: expressiveness, type safety, developer joy 12:04 Why TypeScript over Scala 15:00 Making programming entertaining 19:00 AI killing developer education 25:20 Uncle Bob's abstraction argument vs AI 30:15 AI as a new programming abstraction layer 42:09 How John uses AI: test generation and boilerplate 49:00 Adapting education and MCP servers for AI-first devs 57:04 Skills worth doubling down on in the AI era 1:06:18 Vibe coders vs senior engineers: the kill order 1:16:18 Retaining top engineers as a founder 1:25:43 Leverage and synergy across open source, companies, and talks 1:34:30 Zio's origin: eating the pain of async, concurrency, and errors 1:41:53 Internal complexity and rewrites in Zio Streams 1:46:25 Effect system proliferation: Zio, Cats Effect, Kyo, Effect TS 1:50:30 The three legs of Zio: async, concurrency, error management 1:58:53 Will effect systems ever go mainstream? 2:06:34 AI favoring typed, structured code 2:13:00 John's process for crafting conference talks 2:15:14 Education, inspiration, and entertainment in talks 2:17:54 How to become a more fluent speaker

    2 Std. 23 Min.
  3. 25.04.2025 ·  VIDEO

    3 - Paul Snively on Programming Languages, Reliable Code and Good Taste in Software Engineering

    Paul Snively is a software architect and engineer with 40 years of programming experience. He's worked professionally with a variety of languages, tools and mental models, including Lisp, C, Java, Scala and Haskell, and has held various positions at Apple, Intel, VMWare, Verizon and others. He is also a frequent conference speaker, talking about type systems, functional programming, formal logic and reliable software. You can find Paul at https://paul-snively.github.io/ --- 0:00 Intro 6:30 Language proliferation: Go, Rust, Scala, and corporate bets 10:00 Scala in production: Twitter, Spark, and Databricks 12:10 Go's appeal: consistency over abstraction ceiling 16:10 Runar Bjarnason, Funnel, and the Verizon Labs team 21:50 Kleisli arrows and HTTP4S explained 30:25 Why purely functional programming: expressions all the way down 36:05 Where correctness matters most: finance, avionics, smart contracts 47:45 TypeScript's success: syntax, ecosystem fit, and .d.ts files 58:55 Scala's adoption problem and the abstraction ceiling 1:03:40 Direct style, Ox, Kyo, and lowering the FP on-ramp 1:11:50 How to develop taste and intuition in software 1:20:00 Apprenticeship, stupid questions, and the monad epiphany 1:33:00 Shipping System 7.0 with 1,500 known bugs: Apple and business tradeoffs 1:41:30 OCaml: governance, stability, and Jane Street 1:53:50 ReasonML and language recommendations for beginners 1:57:00 Paradigms over languages: Smalltalk, Prolog, Haskell, C

    2 Std. 5 Min.
  4. 31.03.2025 ·  VIDEO

    2 - James Ward on Effect Oriented Programming, Writing Code in the Age of AI, Curiosity and Exploration

    James Ward is a professional software developer since 1997, with much of that time spent helping developers build software that doesn't suck. He describes himself as a typed pure functional programming zealot who often compromises on his ideals to just get stuff done. He is the author of several programming books, the latest being Effect Oriented Programming. James hosts the Happy Path Programming podcast and is a frequent conference speaker around the world, and he's been recognized as a Java Champion in 2021. He is currently a Developer Advocate for AWS. --- 0:00 Intro 1:38 Why James wrote Effect Oriented Programming 5:30 From Scala 3 book to Zio book to effects 14:08 What effects actually are 27:02 Typed errors, dependencies, and retry superpowers 40:56 Refactorability, testability, and concurrency with effects 42:56 Zio streams as a quick win 43:56 Career mindset shifts: types and functional programming 52:49 Scala vs Kotlin vs Java type systems 1:01:21 Fringe languages: Unison, Rock, WASM 1:02:04 Algebraic data types + exhaustive pattern matching in Scala 3 1:07:11 EasyRacer: learning concurrency through experiments 1:12:48 Using AI and LLMs for learning unfamiliar languages 1:16:45 The FFT benchmark story: agent vs. profiler 1:23:57 LLMs as copy-paste at scale: the abstractions problem 1:31:17 MCP: what it is and what it could become 1:45:21 Are we at peak AI hype? 1:51:42 Agentic loops, interaction models, and type inference gaps 1:55:57 Skills that still matter: understanding code you didn't write 1:57:31 Formal verification and deriving code from specs 2:02:44 How James finds time to explore so many technologies 2:05:41 CFP submissions as a forcing function for learning

    2 Std. 9 Min.

Info

A podcast about interesting programming topics for the curious software engineer. You will learn about programming languages, tools, libraries, and combinations thereof, from the best in the field.