Software Unscripted

Jonathan Blow on Programming Language Design

November 15, 2025·1h 41m
Episode Description from the Publisher

Jonathan Blow, creator of popular games Braid and The Witness, talks with Richard about programming language design - including the design of the programming language he's been building for game developers.Keynote & Tech Demo - https://youtu.be/IdpD5QIVOKQECS and Rust's Borrow Checker - https://youtu.be/4t1K66dMhWk"The 30 Million Line Problem" - https://youtu.be/kZRE7HIO3vk"A New Programming Language for Games" - https://youtu.be/TH9VCN6UkyQ?si=Z5cqazo4QU7AibzBRoc Programming Language - https://roc-lang.orgCasey Muratori's "Performance-Aware Programming" Course - https://www.computerenhance.com/p/welcome-to-the-performance-awareFile Pilot File Explorer - https://filepilot.tech/Ghostty Terminal - https://ghostty.org/Language Server Protocol - https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/WebAssembly Integer Sizes - https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/WebAssembly/Reference/Numeric/ConstCliff Click's Sea of Nodes Compiler IR - https://github.com/SeaOfNodes/Chapters00:00 The Programming Establishment02:04 Metaprogramming05:04 Compile-Time Execution08:05 Language Feature Interoperability10:53 Compile Time Execution27:52 Cross-Compiling and FFI31:04 Determinism in Programming35:07 Balancing Power and Safety40:11 Memory Safety vs. Performance50:15 The Evolution of Software Performance55:32 Performance Awareness01:03:56 Dependencies and Version Control01:14:54 Dependency Availability Risk01:18:42 Memory Management01:24:51 Sandboxing01:30:23 Operating Systems Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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