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)
Hosts
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
