What if your search for connection took you somewhere you never meant to go—almost costing you everything? John Walker grew up building computers and exploring early internet forums, always looking for a place to fit in. As a teenager, he hacked his school network and spent hours on IRC, but loneliness crept in. Drugs became a fun exploration and a social experiment. But soon, addiction pulled him into homelessness and jail. Even at his lowest, John turned to online communities. He ran IRC ...| CoRecursive: Coding Stories
Have you ever found yourself in a situation where learning felt like an uphill battle? Like no matter how hard you tried, the pieces just wouldn't fall into place? Steve Krouse's story shows the power of the right learning environment. As a child, Steve felt he wasn't good at math. But everything changed with an afterschool program called IMACS. Initially skeptical, he soon embraced its creative approach, which encouraged self-paced learning. At IMACS, Steve learned to think on paper, g...| CoRecursive: Coding Stories
Can a single line of code change the way we see science, policy, and trust? In this episode we explore the "Climategate" scandal that erupted from leaked emails and code snippets, fueling doubts about climate science. What starts as an investigation into accusations of fraud leads to an unexpected journey through the messy reality of data science, legacy code struggles, and the complex pressures scientists face every day. Along the way, we uncover stories of hidden errors and misunderst...| CoRecursive: Coding Stories
What if internet trolls could become your greatest collaborators? Nolen Royalty discovered this unexpected truth when his simple checkbox game went viral. It began with a school email prank that crashed servers but sparked a philosophy: creative constraints breed innovation. From "Flappy Dird" to "One Million Checkboxes," Nolen built games that turned limitations into playgrounds. But when his checkbox project became a battleground of organized chaos, Nolen faced a choice: suppress the chaos ...| CoRecursive: Coding Stories
How did Spotify scale from 10 engineers to 100s to 1000s ...without slowing down? Without becoming corporate? Facing an IPO deadline, Pia Nilsson worked with 300 teams to transform how Spotify built software. She spearheaded a movement that led them from working in silos to a unified developer platform. Hear the inside story of how Spotify's Platform teams embraced transparency and customer focus to create Backstage — now used by companies worldwide. It's an amazing tale of ingenuity ...| CoRecursive: Coding Stories
I've been on many projects that get canceled. We're building cool stuff. We're going above and beyond, and we're excited. But the project encounters reality, shifting priorities, or budgeting constraints, and the work never goes anywhere. It always feels tragic, but then I move on. But what if I didn't let a project get canceled? What if I couldn't accept that? That is what Ron Avitzur's story is all about. He is the creator of "Graphing Calculator," and he would not let it be canceled. Ep...| CoRecursive: Coding Stories
I believe that getting underrepresented groups into software development is a good thing. This is not a controversial opinion until you start talking about felons. Today's guest is Rick Wolter. He's an iOS developer who served 18 years in prison for second degree murder. Rick killed somebody and for some that's all they need to know about Rick. But today's episode is about Rick's path to redemption him, teaching himself to code in prison, smuggling in a Python interpreter, and then get...| CoRecursive: Coding Stories
I recently got an email from Jeff Shrager, who said he'd been working hard to solve a mystery about some famous code. Eliza, the chatbot, was built in 1964, and she didn't answer questions like Alexa or Siri. She asked questions. She was a therapist chatbot and quickly became famous after being described in a 1964 paper. But here is the mystery. We're not sure how the original version worked. Joseph Weizenbaum never released the code. But Jeff tracked it down, and some of the things we thou...| CoRecursive: Coding Stories
On this day in 2014 "lame april fools' jokes" were banned from hacker news. Today in our first This-Day-in-History segment, I want to share some of history not just of April Fools', but of tech pranks in general, all leading up to 2014. Why were pranks and April Fools' jokes traditionally celebrated in tech? Why are they now considered as dang said, "lame?"? And is there anything we can do to save them? Those are today's questions. Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast...| CoRecursive: Coding Stories
I’ve always found meaning, and a lot of strength, in building things. Now, with AI coding agents changing the way we work, it’s easy to feel threatened, like something essential might get taken away. But honestly, that creative urge can’t be replaced by any tool. In this episode, I talk about what it’s like when your identity is tied to... […]| CoRecursive Podcast
Today's guest is Douglas Crockford. He's sharing the story of JSON, his discovery of JavaScript's good parts, and his approach to finding a simple way to build software. Also, his battles against XML, against complexity, his battles to say that there's a better way to build software. This is foundational stuff for the web, and Doug is an iconoclast. […]| CoRecursive Podcast
CPAN was the first open-source software module repository. And on this day, Aug 1st, in 1995, CPAN was first announced to a private group of PERL users.And why does this matter? Who is still using PERL anyhow? CPAN inspired everything that would follow: npm, maven, cargo, nuget, hackage, ruby gems, python pypi and so on.If you are building things today... […]| CoRecursive Podcast
On June 1st, 2014, the following question showed up on hacker news:> Why is 80 characters, the standard limit for code width. Why 80?>> Why not? 79 or 81 or even a hundred. So you probably know what happens next. People started to post their opinions and the comments and other people started to disagree. The posts spread around the... […]| CoRecursive Podcast
