Programming Throwdown

Patrick Wheeler and Jason Gauci
Programming Throwdown

Programming Throwdown educates Computer Scientists and Software Engineers on a cavalcade of programming and tech topics. Every show will cover a new programming language, so listeners will be able to speak intelligently about any programming language.

  1. 180: Reinforcement Learning

    MAR 17

    180: Reinforcement Learning

    Intro topic: Grills News/Links: You can’t call yourself a senior until you’ve worked on a legacy projecthttps://www.infobip.com/developers/blog/seniors-working-on-a-legacy-projectRecraft might be the most powerful AI image platform I’ve ever used — here’s whyhttps://www.tomsguide.com/ai/ai-image-video/recraft-might-be-the-most-powerful-ai-image-platform-ive-ever-used-heres-whyNASA has a list of 10 rules for software developmenthttps://www.cs.otago.ac.nz/cosc345/resources/nasa-10-rules.htmAMD Radeon RX 9070 XT performance estimates leaked: 42% to 66% faster than Radeon RX 7900 GREhttps://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/amd-estimates-of-radeon-rx-9070-xt-performance-leaked-42-percent-66-percent-faster-than-radeon-rx-7900-gre  Book of the Show Patrick: The Player of Games (Ian M Banks)https://a.co/d/1ZpUhGl (non-affiliate)Jason: Basic Roleplaying Universal Game Enginehttps://amzn.to/3ES4p5i Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h Tool of the Show Patrick: Pokemon Sword and ShieldJason: Features and Labels ( https://fal.ai ) Topic: Reinforcement Learning Three types of AISupervised LearningUnsupervised LearningReinforcement LearningOnline vs Offline RLOptimization algorithmsValue optimizationSARSAQ-LearningPolicy optimizationPolicy GradientsActor-CriticProximal Policy OptimizationValue vs Policy OptimizationValue optimization is more intuitive (Value loss)Policy optimization is less intuitive at first (policy gradients)Converting values to policies in deep learning is difficultImitation LearningSupervised policy learningOften used to bootstrap reinforcement learningPolicy EvaluationPropensity scoring versus model-basedChallenges to training RL modelTwo optimization loopsCollecting feedback vs updating the modelDifficult optimization targetPolicy evaluationRLHF &  GRPO ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    1h 52m
  2. 179: Project Planning

    FEB 3

    179: Project Planning

    Intro topic: Lego event space & retail store: https://www.instagram.com/bambeecave  News/Links: StackOverflow Question Count Going Down https://gist.github.com/hopeseekr/f522e380e35745bd5bdc3269a9f0b132DeepSeek claims its ‘reasoning’ model beats OpenAI’s o1 on certain benchmarkshttps://techcrunch.com/2025/01/20/deepseek-claims-its-reasoning-model-beats-openais-o1-on-certain-benchmarks/ Computer Science Papers Every Developer Should Readhttps://newsletter.techworld-with-milan.com/p/computer-science-papers-every-developerNvidia Cosmos - an AI platform to change the future of robots and cars - wins Best of CES 2025https://www.zdnet.com/article/nvidia-signs-largest-car-maker-toyota-to-use-its-self-driving-tech/  Book of the Show Patrick: Alice’s Adventures in a differentiable wonderlandhttps://www.sscardapane.it/alice-book/Jason: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Hulu/Netflix/etc) Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h Tool of the Show Patrick: Digseumhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/3361470/Digseum/Jason: Sqlitedict - Python dictionaries saved to disk Topic: Project Planning and Management Why?Gathering feedbackIdentifying risksDeciding future headcountDocumenting / discovering dependenciesCritical pathScheduleReduce the bullwhip effectHow it worksSMART goalsspecific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-boundMT is most importantGantt ChartsScrumAgileKanbanToolsWhiteboard (the generic IRL one)Post it notesJIRAAsanaOpenProjectDealing with uncertaintyBufferingIssues with recursive paddingProject planning Post-Mortems ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    1h 43m
  3. 177: Vector Databases

    11/04/2024

    177: Vector Databases

    Intro topic:  Buying a Car News/Links: Cognitive Load is what Mattershttps://github.com/zakirullin/cognitive-loadDiffusion models are Real-Time Game Engineshttps://gamengen.github.io/Your Company Needs Junior Devshttps://softwaredoug.com/blog/2024/09/07/your-team-needs-juniorsSeamless Streaming / Fish Speech / LLaMA OmniSeamless: https://huggingface.co/facebook/seamless-streamingFish: https://github.com/fishaudio/fish-speech LLaMA Omni: https://github.com/ictnlp/LLaMA-Omni  Book of the Show Patrick: Thought Emporium Youtubehttps://youtu.be/8X1_HEJk2Hw?si=T8EaHul-QMahyUvQJason: Novel Mindshttps://www.novelminds.ai/ Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h Tool of the Show Patrick: Escape Simulatorhttps://pinestudio.com/games/escape-simulator/Jason: Cursor IDEhttps://www.cursor.com/Topic: Vector Databases (~54 min) How computers represent data traditionallyASCII valuesRGB valuesHow traditional compression worksHuffman encoding (tree structure)Lossy example: Fourier Transform & store coefficientsHow embeddings are computedPairwise (contrastive) methodsForward models (self-supervised)Similarity metricsApproximate Nearest Neighbors (ANN)Sub-Linear ANNClusteringSpace Partitioning (e.g. K-D Trees)What a vector database doesPerform nearest-neighbors with many different similarity metricsStore the vectors and the data structures to support sub-linear ANNHandle updates, deletes, rebalancing/reclustering, backups/restoresExamplespgvector: a vector-database plugin for postgresWeaviate, Pinecone Milvus ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    1h 28m
  4. 175: Resume Writing

    08/16/2024

    175: Resume Writing

    175: Resume Writing Intro topic:  DSLR Photography vs Camera Phone News/Links: Free Internet while flying by abusing edits to your profile namehttps://robertheaton.com/pyskywifi/Making Animated Characters with AI Arthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSN76gb_Z28On 10x Engineershttps://stackoverflow.blog/2024/06/19/the-real-10x-developer-makes-their-whole-team-better/The Beauty and Challenges of AI-Generated Artistic Gymnasticshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwJIYj3hPAUBook of the Show Patrick: The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liuhttps://amzn.to/3xNEoRBJason: The Checklist Manifestohttps://amzn.to/3W2JjpM Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h Tool of the Show Patrick: Super Mario Bros. Wonder (Nintendo Switch)https://amzn.to/3S9VJLfJason: Amazon Qhttps://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=AmazonWebServices.amazon-q-vscode Topic: Resume Writing (Courtesy of Matthew C.) Why have a resume?Many jobs require it to get into the considerationToday many are screened for keywords automaticallyLog for future youWhat is a resume?One-page descriptionKey accomplishments & experiencesComparison to CVReferencesHow to write a good resume?Do’sInclude your github if it has good contributionsBe specific (dates, locations, skills)Isolate your specific contributionsBe accurate/honestBe conciseBe ready to discuss any point you have on the resumeList hobbies/activities/extracurricularsDon’tsHave mistakes (especially dates)Use images (most companies use text extraction)Use it as a design portfolioPut social qualities (e.gs. hard-working, motivated, friendly)Use fancy templates/toolsResourcesManager Tools: How to scan resumes https://www.manager-tools.com/2016/05/how-scan-resume-part-1 Google docsLatex/Lyx for CVsHow to think about your career and how it impacts your future resume writing (career planning)Technologies and architectures more than specifics of project detailsHow various choices may age over time ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    1h 41m
  5. 174: Devops

    06/10/2024

    174: Devops

    Intro topic:  Social Media Auto Responder LLM News/Links: Amazon releases Amazon Qhttps://press.aboutamazon.com/2024/4/aws-announces-general-availability-of-amazon-q-the-most-capable-generative-ai-powered-assistant-for-accelerating-software-development-and-leveraging-companies-internal-dataCheap RiscV “Super Cluster” from BitluniDIY 256-Core RISC-V super computerhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4d3PgEXhdYCH32V203Phi 3 Vision Releasedhttps://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/new-models-added-to-the-phi-3-family-available-on-microsoft-azure/OllamaChatGPT 4ohttps://openai.com/index/hello-gpt-4o/Book of the Show Patrick: MyFirstMillion Podcasthttps://www.mfmpod.com/Jason: A Path Towards Autonomous Machine Intelligencehttps://openreview.net/pdf?id=BZ5a1r-kVsf Patreon https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h Tool of the Show Patrick: Dave the Diverhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/1868140/DAVE_THE_DIVER/Jason: Turing Completehttps://store.steampowered.com/app/1444480/Turing_Complete/  Topic: DevOps What is DevOpsDevOps vs SREWhy DevOps is importantEngineering time is expensiveOutages can hurt company metrics & reputationBuild & Testing InfrastructureBazel & Build/Test IdempotencyBuild/Test FarmsBuildBarnGithub ActionsJenkinsInfrastructure as codeTerraformBlue Green DeploymentContinuous Everything!Continuous IntegrationContinuous DeploymentHow to Measure DevOpsBuild TimesRelease cadenceBug tracking / round trip timesEngineer SurveysTime spent doing what you enjoyDevOps Horror Stories ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    1h 26m
  6. 173: Mocking and Unit Tests

    04/29/2024

    173: Mocking and Unit Tests

    173: Mocking and Unit Tests Intro topic:  Headphones News/Links: Texas A&M University Physics Festivalhttps://physicsfestival.tamu.edu/Rust vs Cpp at GoogleLars Bergstrom (Google Director of Engineering): Rust teams at Google are as productive as the ones using Go and 2x those using Cpphttps://youtu.be/6mZRWFQRvmw?t=27012Is Cosine Similarity Really About Similarityhttps://arxiv.org/abs/2403.05440Xz utils supply chain attackAndres Freund at Microsofthttps://arstechnica.com/security/2024/04/what-we-know-about-the-xz-utils-backdoor-that-almost-infected-the-world/ Book of the Show Patrick:80/20 Running by Matt Fitzgeraldhttps://amzn.to/3xyEKLoJason: A Movie Making Nerdhttps://amzn.to/49ycDJj Patreon Plug https://www.patreon.com/programmingthrowdown?ty=h Tool of the Show Patrick: Shapez Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.playdigious.shapez&hl=en_US&gl=USShapez iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/shapez-factory-game/id6450830779Jason: Dwarf Fortresshttps://store.steampowered.com/app/975370/Dwarf_Fortress/ Topic: Mocking and Unit Tests What are Unit TestsBalance between utility, maintenance, and coverageUnit Test: testing small functionsRegression Test: Testing larger functionsSystem Test: End-to-end testing of programsWhat are mocks & fakesWhen to use mock vs. fakeMocking libraries in various languagesPython: https://docs.python.org/3/library/unittest.mock.htmlJava: https://github.com/mockito/mockitoC++:  https://github.com/google/googletest ★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

    1h 35m
    4.5
    out of 5
    550 Ratings

    About

    Programming Throwdown educates Computer Scientists and Software Engineers on a cavalcade of programming and tech topics. Every show will cover a new programming language, so listeners will be able to speak intelligently about any programming language.

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