96 episodes
Kopec Explains Software David Kopec, Rebecca Kopec
-
- Education
-
-
5.0 • 18 Ratings
-
Every other week we make a software-related technical topic intelligible. We aim to help you develop an intuitive understanding of each subject, instead of emphasizing formal definitions. Join us as we learn about the wide world of software.
-
DataOps, Data Pipelines, and Estuary Flow with Johnny Graettinger
The world of data stores has become complex and fragmented. Companies find their data spread across a variety of sources with no obvious way to integrate it. Estuary is a startup that is taming that complexity by making it easier to create real-time data pipelines. In this episode we speak with Johnny Graettinger, the co-founder of Estuary, about data fragmentation, DataOps, data pipelines, and their product, Flow.
Show Notes
Estuary
Estuary on Twitter
Estuary on GitHub
Follow us on Twitter @KopecExplains.
Theme “Place on Fire” Copyright 2019 Creo, CC BY 4.0
Find out more at http://kopec.live -
Software Piracy
There is a constant battle between software publishers and pirates who find ways to redistribute proprietary software in violation of its license. In this episode we explain how copyright law protects proprietary software, the mechanisms publishers employ to reduce piracy including forms of DRM, and the means pirates use to distribute software. We also have a philosophical discussion about whether software piracy is wrong.
Show Notes
Hot Property: The Stealing of Ideas in an Age of Globalization by Pat Choate via Amazon
Free Software, Free Society by Richard Stallman via Free Software Foundation
Don't Copy That Floppy via YouTube
Episode 12: Open Source Software
Episode 26: Napster
Follow us on Twitter @KopecExplains.
Theme “Place on Fire” Copyright 2019 Creo, CC BY 4.0
Find out more at http://kopec.live -
Phone Location Tracking
Your phone includes multiple technologies for tracking your location. Your location can be triangulated via signals to cell towers, precisely pinpointed using its GPS chip and a connection to a satellite, and approximated using WiFi signals and a big database of WiFi base station locations. In addition, an Indoor Positioning System like iBeacon can be used to track your phone inside a building. In this episode we explain the tradeoffs between these various methods and how they're typically used.
Show Notes
Episode 4: iOS vs. Android
Follow us on Twitter @KopecExplains.
Theme “Place on Fire” Copyright 2019 Creo, CC BY 4.0
Find out more at http://kopec.live -
Python
By several measures, including a 2021 survey by IEEE, Python is the most popular programming language in the world. But why? What's special about it? In this episode we'll go over Python's history, key technical aspects of the language, and the niches within software development that it dominates. We also discuss some problems in the Python world.
Show Notes
Episode 11: What is a Programming Language?
Episode 87: Compilers and Interpreters
Episode 35: The C Programming Language
Top Programming Languages 2021 via IEEE
Follow us on Twitter @KopecExplains.
Theme “Place on Fire” Copyright 2019 Creo, CC BY 4.0
Find out more at http://kopec.live -
PayPal's Early Innovations
Today we know PayPal as a financial powerhouse. But when it was a young company, it had to innovate to survive. PayPal was the result of the merger of two startups—Confinity and X.com. Confinity was trying to be a digital payments solution for Palm Pilots, while X.com was an early online bank. PayPal first found success as a conduit for eBay payments. But perhaps PayPal's greatest innovations were in the area of fraud prevention. PayPal was a pioneer of bank account verification, CAPTCHAs, and using machine learning techniques on big data.
Show Notes
The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni via Amazon
CAPTCHA via Wikipedia
Random Forest via Wikipedia
Follow us on Twitter @KopecExplains.
Theme “Place on Fire” Copyright 2019 Creo, CC BY 4.0
Find out more at http://kopec.live -
Binary Search
Binary search is an algorithm for finding an item in a sorted data set. It requires that all of the items in the data set be of the same data type and comparable to one another. In other words, the data type needs to have a defined "order." Binary search is orders of magnitude more efficient than its chief alternative, linear search, which is just an in-order search of every item in a data set. Binary search works by continuously reducing the search space by half. A binary search can find an item in a data set in a maximum of log(number of items in the data set) operations where log is base 2. We explain this simple but efficient fundamental computer science algorithm and the downside of requiring that a data set be sorted.
Show Notes
Episode 62: What is an Algorithm?
Follow us on Twitter @KopecExplains.
Theme “Place on Fire” Copyright 2019 Creo, CC BY 4.0
Find out more at http://kopec.live
Customer Reviews
LOVE this podcast
I’m a Product Manager who needs these explanations to help me get more technical and work better with Engineers. I recommend this pod to all my PM friends or anyone new to tech who are in the same boat. It’s so important to start from the basics to build a solid understanding and this delivers with every single topic. Keep them coming!!
So nice.
I like computers. I’ve just begun learning how to program and this has been a great resource. I like the simplicity of the explanations without dumbing down the information too much. Thank you for your thoughtful content.
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Excellent explanations of software topics from first principles. Thanks for creating this!