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The Late Night Linux Family

Linux Dev Time

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About the show

Professional software developers Amolith and Kevin join Joe and guests to discuss developing with, and for Linux.

Newest episodes

Linux Dev Time – Episode 162

27 min

Why estimating how long it will take to write a piece of software is hard, why using units of time isn’t very helpful, and why breaking the process down into small chunks is ultimately how to do it.                 Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 161

24 min

When is it time to look for a new software development job? How do you cut through all the other applicants and get your foot in the door? When you do move on, how much notice should you give?                   Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 160

25 min

Dogfooding: is it useful? Is it necessary? Can you build an application that people like to use without dogfooding? What are the differences between dogfooding and mere testing?                 Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

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All episodes

Linux Dev Time – Episode 162

27 min

Why estimating how long it will take to write a piece of software is hard, why using units of time isn’t very helpful, and why breaking the process down into small chunks is ultimately how to do it.                 Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 161

24 min

When is it time to look for a new software development job? How do you cut through all the other applicants and get your foot in the door? When you do move on, how much notice should you give?                   Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 160

25 min

Dogfooding: is it useful? Is it necessary? Can you build an application that people like to use without dogfooding? What are the differences between dogfooding and mere testing?                 Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 159

25 min

Our fantasy programming language features.               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 158

26 min

Andy recently wrote that product quality is proportional to attention and code quality is inversely proportional to pressure. Is he right?               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 157

26 min

Macros: are they a superpower, a necessary evil, or a mistake?                   Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 156

25 min

How deep should you go with your understanding of systems?                 Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 155

26 min

Does language choice actually matter?               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 154

23 min

With an increase in the number of security bugs being disclosed irresponsibly, we dig into how the process should work, the differences between normal bugs and security bugs, the complexities of coordinating patches, the human issues involved, and more.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 153

7 min

The bit of code we admire most and why. This is a short episode because Joe is having a summer break.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 152

25 min

We get into the process of working on and with formal protocol specifications, something Andy is familiar with from his work on Matrix.               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 151

28 min

What makes a good library?               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 150

28 min

Andy has been taking the One Billion Row Challenge, and has been thinking about the broader question of what makes software fast.   Andy’s videos on Peertube and YouTube.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 149

21 min

It’s yet another hot questions episode. Colour schemes, syntax highlighting, code patterns, fonts, and keyboards.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 148

26 min

We get into dependency management. The pros and cons of tools like Dependabot, the varying approaches with different languages and standard library sizes, the times when pinning dependencies makes sense, and more.   Turn Dependabot Off             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 147

23 min

It’s another hot questions episode. Whether we think better on our own or with other people, our non-standard debugging habits, favourite interview questions, coding at night, character encoding, and abolishing time zones.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 146

25 min

In the wake of Discord’s recent announcement about age verification, Matrix recently came in for a lot of criticism by a lot of people who said it’s not a viable replacement. Andy works on Matrix for a living and Amolith is invested in the XMPP world so we get into secure messaging, trade-offs between security and user experience, federation, and more.   Piss up at The Shipwrights Arms (just next to London Bridge station) on Saturday 27th June from 6pm until late         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 145

23 min

The importance of having and sticking to correct development processes, what can go wrong when you don’t, and how to fix the problems you might end up with.               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 144

22 min

People often like to talk down Electron, but it is really that bad? There may be better ways to use Web technologies to make desktop apps, but isn’t having Linux versions of apps a good thing no matter how they are made?   We mentioned Tauri and Wails.               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 143

25 min

The career progression options you have as a software engineer, moving from junior to senior dev, other paths you can go down like architecture or tech lead, and why management isn’t for everyone.               Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed    

Linux Dev Time – Episode 142

22 min

Software complexity is a complex topic, so we dig into it.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 141

23 min

Dealing with a crisis as a developer, how to keep everyone in the loop while you fix systems and code, why pointing the blame isn’t useful, some of our horror stories, and more.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 140

5 min

What we are likely to be doing when you hear this, and why it’s unlikely to involve much in the way of development. This is a short episode because Joe is having a break for the Christmas period.         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 139

27 min

How far you can go with eliminating global variables, forcing everything you ever need to be passed in as arguments.         Tailscale Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/ldt and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.     Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 138

25 min

When the right time to make a big change to your software is, how you get users to test pre-release versions, how long you keep old features around, when that’s not possible, and more.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 137

23 min

What object-oriented programming is, why it went out of fashion, and how more modern approaches to development incorporate some of its aspects.         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 136

27 min

Some of the languages that we love and why we love them. It’s not just Rust, honest!         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 135

26 min

With constant news stories about security issues with developer-published software in package managers like npm, we weigh up the pros and cons of this approach to distributing open source software.         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 134

24 min

What makes a good commit, the tools we use to help us produce good commits, and why we care about this.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 133

23 min

Some of the alternatives to GitHub that we use, why we use them, and how they differ in terms of features and workflows.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 132

25 min

A lot of key open source software is paid for by large companies. That has some advantages, but it can also cause some issues. Maybe it would be better if more FOSS development was paid for by smaller companies and contributions from users.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 131

26 min

We explore the differences between terms like coder, software developer, engineer, and architect. They are often used interchangeably, but there can be real differences between them. Or at least once upon a time there were differences.       Vibe coders are in for a shock. Writing code was never that hard. Don’t Let Architecture Astronauts Scare You             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 130

21 min

Not invented here syndrome is very common in open source. We get into why that is, when it makes sense to start your own project from scratch, and how contributing to existing software can sometimes be better for everyone.             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 129

30 min

With the recent news of Bcachefs (probably) being removed from the Linux kernel, we are joined by Allan Jude from 2.5 Admins and Klara to discuss some of what we think went wrong, how to manage and maintain multiple releases of a project at once, and why release engineering is an important concept.         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 128

22 min

What it takes to sustain a medium-to-large-sized open source project.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 127

29 min

When and how to use benchmarking in your project, why it’s hard, and why optimising your code can be even harder.   Blog post about the speed of ripgrep hyperfine: A command-line benchmarking tool Profile-guided optimization Andy benchmarking IndexedDb             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 126

25 min

How we deal with complex projects involving non-technical people as well as developers. How to manage expectations about timing, how to deal with issues, why documenting conversations is important, and more.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 125

26 min

What are the fundamental ideas and components of development and programming?         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 124

20 min

It’s another hot questions episode. Tabs vs spaces, whether we have imposter syndrome, why software keeps getting heavier, the correct length of functions and files, and what every programmer should know.   Some things we mentioned: Interesting Characters (UTF-16, utf-8, Unicode, encodings) Software Design is Knowledge Building The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Must Know About Unicode in 2023 (Still No Excuses!)         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 123

25 min

Andy is convinced that functional programming isn’t boring. Listen to find out if he’s right!   Functional Programming & Haskell Beautiful Racket Functional Programming & Haskell – Computerphile         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 122

22 min

We’ve done hot takes episodes in the past but this is different, it’s hot questions. Would we rather have bad managers who can code or good managers who can’t? Too many comments or none? 80 columns or as long as you like? What editor do we use and why?   Vim for Fun or PeerTube version       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 121

24 min

Joe accidentally tried vibe coding and it was as much of a disaster as you’d imagine. Amolith has also tried it, and does his best to defend the use of LLMs with development. Kevin and Andy are mostly bemused. We all have concerns about the ethics and environmental issues. This episode has a bit more bad language than usual.         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 120

28 min

Our advice on how to move into a career in software development including making and contributing to projects, advocating for your work, collaborating, avoiding exploitation, learning Git, and loads more.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 119

28 min

Andy is only publishing his games on F-Droid and not the Google Play Store from now on, and he tells us why.   Rabbit Escape Box Stacker Smolpxl Games Adresilo Sepia Search             Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 118

27 min

We dig into the technical details of the Linux Kernel Rust drama.       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 117

24 min

Mark from Linux Matters who’s a web developer joins us to talk about working in PHP – a language that’s mature and well established, and how that compares with working with newer “cooler” languages like Rust and Go.   Moodle Mark’s Bash text adventure Bash associative array examples       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 116

20 min

Where is the balance between efficiency and openness when it comes to saved file formats? If everything was based on plain text it would make the files readable for years to come, but at what cost?         Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 115

22 min

We dig into SQLite – an interesting and unusual project that is widely used but has an uncommon licence, a proprietary test suite, and doesn’t take external contributions. Plus printf() vs “proper” debugging.           Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 114

23 min

We explore the line between developer and sysadmin and come to the conclusion that despite the clear difference between the roles, there is a lot of crossover when it comes to skills and character traits.   The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security       Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

Linux Dev Time – Episode 113

28 min

We are joined by popey from Linux Matters to talk about how software packaging has changed over the years. The tooling has improved massively, containerisation has made a huge impact, but Andy still prefers the old distro repo model.     Support us on Patreon and get an ad-free RSS feed with early episodes sometimes   See our contact page for ways to get in touch. Subscribe to the RSS feed

See all 162 episodes

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