Fallthrough

We've got the classic trio of Kris, Matt, and Steve back to discuss Steve's impending cancellation for putting himself in the middle of some drama! Steve gives us a recount of the current saga between Zig, Rust, Bun, Fil-C, and his own programming language, Rue. The group discuss the problems with the drama, especially since it overshadows an amazing technical feat: a million lines of code ported to a new language in a week, then shipped to real customers, with a product that pulls in billions of dollars. Steve also made the mistake of complimenting Zig, which caused a 163 comment dog pile onto him.

We've got supporter content, of course! This week that includes what it costs a community when the BDFL of a language says your code sucks, why the fear that LLMs can appear to think says more about us than about them, Steve on why you cannot ban a bunch of floats in a text file, Fil-C's promise of memory safe C and the trade-offs its author will not name, the pull request titled make Zig actually memory safe (unlike Rust), Odin not being notable enough, and Steve drops some exclusive new thoughts: agentic development is actually RTS macro versus micro. Not a supporter yet? Fix that today by heading over to https://fallthrough.fm/subscribe where you'll get not only extra content but also higher quality audio. Sign up today!

If you prefer to watch this episode, you can view it on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xjDWZPBfvVI

No episode of the aftershow this week. We'll have more aftershow episodes soon! In the meantime, catch up on previous episodes at https://break.show.

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Table of Contents:
  • Prologue (00:00:00)
  • Chapter 1: Bun Leaves Zig for Rust, in Public, by Accident (00:02:47)
  • Chapter 2: Memory Problems, the Unsafe Burndown, and Andrew's Post (00:10:22)
  • Chapter 4: A Million Lines in a Week (00:14:17)
  • Chapter 8: Rue: The Compiler Steve Did Not Write (00:17:35)
  • Chapter 9: 163 Replies for Complimenting Zig on Hacker News (00:22:50)
  • Chapter 11: One Hundred Thousand Lines I Have Not Read (00:29:25)
  • Chapter 12: Compilers Wrote More Assembly Than We Ever Did (00:33:49)
  • Chapter 13: Vegan Plus Bacon, and the Cure for Binary Thinking (00:35:58)
  • Chapter 14: Never Arguing About Tabs Versus Spaces Again (00:40:41)
  • Chapter 15: Write the Documentation, Not the Code Review (00:44:37)
  • Chapter 17: Effort Is What Makes It Not Slop (00:51:05)
  • Chapter 18: Still the Chaotic Beginning (00:57:41)
  • Chapter 19: Critical Thinking Is Curiosity, Not Skepticism (01:01:06)
  • Epilogue (01:08:21)

Socials:
  • (00:00) - Start
  • (00:00) - Prologue
  • (02:47) - Chapter 1: Bun Leaves Zig for Rust, in Public, by Accident
  • (10:22) - Chapter 2: Memory Problems, the Unsafe Burndown, and Andrew's Post
  • (14:17) - Chapter 4: A Million Lines in a Week
  • (17:35) - Chapter 8: Rue: The Compiler Steve Did Not Write
  • (22:50) - Chapter 9: 163 Replies for Complimenting Zig on Hacker News
  • (29:25) - Chapter 11: One Hundred Thousand Lines I Have Not Read
  • (33:49) - Chapter 12: Compilers Wrote More Assembly Than We Ever Did
  • (35:58) - Chapter 13: Vegan Plus Bacon, and the Cure for Binary Thinking
  • (40:41) - Chapter 14: Never Arguing About Tabs Versus Spaces Again
  • (44:37) - Chapter 15: Write the Documentation, Not the Code Review
  • (51:05) - Chapter 17: Effort Is What Makes It Not Slop
  • (57:41) - Chapter 18: Still the Chaotic Beginning
  • (01:01:06) - Chapter 19: Critical Thinking Is Curiosity, Not Skepticism
  • (01:08:21) - Epilogue

Creators and Guests

Host
Kris Brandow
Host
Matthew Sanabria
Matthew is an engineering leader focused on building reliable, scalable, and observable systems. Matthew is known for using his breadth and depth of experience to add value in minimal context situations and help great people become great engineers through mentoring. Matthew serves the Go community as a member of GoBridge. In his spare time, Matthew spends time with his family, helps grow his wife's chocolate business, works on home improvement projects, and reads technical resources to learn and tinker.
Host
Steve Klabnik

What is Fallthrough?

A deep and nuanced conversational podcast focused on technology, software, and computing.