Mike

Talking Murderbot with Amy Salley - Picture Me Coding In this episode we're joined again by Amy Salley, cohost of the Hugo, Girl! podcast, to help us discuss the Murderbot series of books by Martha Wells.  We discuss our favorite characters and plot...

In our latest episode Amy Salley of @hugogirlpodcast.bsky.social returns to help us discuss Murderbot. We discuss the books (up to Network Effect) and how Martha Wells explores topics like AI, consciousness, and neurodivergence. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

Making Iceberg Work for Operational Data | Materialize Apache Iceberg was built for batch analytics — but operational data changes continuously. Learn how Materialize streams live, transactionally consistent data into Iceberg without the memory and latenc...

A recent post by @dov.dev about Materialize's new Iceberg sink, and generally about connecting live operational data to analytics stores. Some interesting detail about (overcome) streaming-batch friction, and turning pristine CDC streams into .. Iceberg! materialize.com/blog/making-...

I wrote a tiny vectorized interpreter last night, and .. thought I'd write up a post describing it. Nothing earth shattering here, but if you haven't seen one of these before it could be interesting! Probably easier to read than the J Incunabulum, but also less .. wow.

github.com/frankmcsherr...

Check out my new episode with @gsalmieri.bsky.social on freedom of speech:
elucidations.vercel.app/posts/episod...

My short interview with Leah Hoffman for CACM
cacm.acm.org/opinion...

I started a software research company

notes.eatonphil.com/2026-02-25-i...

Nerds of a Feather 2026 Awards Eligibility Awards season has once again begun. We began by looking at all the works we collectively have in our sights for nominations in our Recomme...

Here's a roundup of many great fan writers to consider for your Hugo nominations!

We're especially excited to see @annmichelleharris.bsky.social, who is eligible for fan writer, short story, and novel!

www.nerds-feather.com/2026/02/nerd...

Book cover of "Designing Data-Intensive Applications, 2nd edition". It has a similar wild boar on the cover as the first edition, but it uses O'Reilly's new cover design, and the boar is now slightly colourised.

The second edition of Designing Data-Intensive Applications, by myself and @chris.blue, is finished and sent off to the printers! Ebooks should be available in the next week, and print books in 3–4 weeks. Sigh of relief. 😅

(BTW, this is a good opportunity to support your favourite local bookshop!)

Building A Distributed SQL Database in 30 Days with AI My journey building HoloStore a distributed key/value store and HoloFusion a distributed SQL DB using AI using the Accord consensus protocol from Cassandra.

kellabyte.substack.com/p/building-a... -- Exactly the kind of thing that shows the power of DataFusion. You can build the database and not (re) build the core query engine

📄 New blog post!

AI will soon write most distributed code.
Distributed code is where our worst bugs —Heisenbugs— live.

The real lever isn’t “test more,” it’s **aim better**: AI should target frameworks where correctness contracts are explicit and checkable.

jhellerstein.github.io/blog/codegen...

I read a lot of @hillelwayne.com and @simonwillison.net . I listen to @seanmcarroll.bsky.social , @geekingoutpod.bsky.social and @hugogirlpodcast.bsky.social. I like signalsandthreads.com but they are not on Bluesky.

J.S. Bach: Goldberg Variations (Live at Carnegie Hall, New York, 2025)

today is Bach day

new Goldberg Variations just dropped: open.spotify.com/album/29g6SU...

11/10

I'm so glad I got to experience writing code as a hobby. Creating things with the primary purpose of bringing yourself joy changes how you view software. Instead of bits and bytes, you start to see the thread and needle.

The cost of turning written business logic into code has dropped to zero. At best, near-zero.

The cost of integrating services and libraries, the plumbing of the code world, has dropped to zero. At best, near-zero.

What does that mean for the future?

New blog post: brooker.co.za/blog/2026/02...

Recreational Programming - Picture Me Coding Does anyone program just for fun anymore?  This episode we're talking about recreational programming, with a focus on A.K. Dewdney's Computer Recreations column from the 1980s.  Also, taco s...

Our latest episode is mostly Mike waxing nostalgic about the heyday of recreational programming, especially the late A.K. Dewdney's _Computer Recreations_ column. We also explain taco shops. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

I wrote a short article about the major companies behind the most recent release of Postgres. Also mentioned interesting commits by smaller contributors, including a first-time contributor who fixed a bug involving ctid scans that might have dated back to 1999.

theconsensus.dev/p/2026/02/02...

Designing a Table Format for ML Workloads Explore designing a table format for ML workloads with practical insights and expert guidance from the LanceDB team.

I have been working on a talk about the future of table formats, specifically what is needed for AI workloads, and I found Weston's blogs on LanceDB well written and super helpful: lancedb.com/blog/designi...

Our Flag Means Local-First - Picture Me Coding This week Mike and Erik talk about the local-first software movement. There's a pretty cool paper about it from 2019 called "Local-First Software:You Own Your Data, in spite of the Cloud", and there's...

Absolute banger of a @picturemecoding.bsky.social episode on 'local first':
www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

Functional Programming: Are We There Yet? - Picture Me Coding To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Scheme, we decided to talk about functional programming: what it is, how's it going these days, and does it still matter in the era of AI.  Although there's b...

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Scheme, we did an episode on functional programming. We trace the history of FP and discuss how FP will or won't fit in the AI programming world. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

The Infinite Drive: S3 and Cloud Object Storage - Picture Me Coding For our first episode of 2026 (and Season 4), we're talking about Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3).  S3 is probably the biggest cloud service, or at least we think it is, because it is super ...

...and we're back. For our first episode of 2026, we're talking about S3 and cloud object storage. Plus, we finally figure out what an exabyte is. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

Huh

Database Research needs an Abstract Relational Query Language For decades, SQL has been the default language for composing queries, but it is increasingly used as an artifact to be read and verified rather than authored. With Large Language Models (LLMs), querie...

Looks like you manifested a paper
arxiv.org/abs/2512.12957

Salesforce and Low-Code with Kyle Willcox - Picture Me Coding In this episode we discuss working in the Salesforce environment, and low-code platforms generally, with software engineer Kyle Willcox.  Kyle's dev journey from a CS degree at UNC Wilmington to ...

For our last episode of 2025 (and Season 3) we welcome guest Kyle Willcox to talk about Salesforce and Low Code. Also, surf, waves, stingrays, and Plato. Multitudes, baby, multitudes. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

Your TV needs to be as large as 70mm IMAX

Tech News Roundup: Fighting Robots with Poetry - Picture Me Coding For the holiday we're doing another news roundup, although it's mostly about data centers and AI to be honest.  Inside the Data Centers...Korean Data CenterOracle Data Center DebtCloudflare Outag...

We did another tech news roundup for the holiday week, but it's mostly about data centers. We recommend you save it for after the Thanksgiving feast-- it should pair nicely with a food coma and a nice Pinot Noir www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

Not to talk about a podcast I like randomly but nothing changed my perspective on AI more than the question posed on @picturemecoding.bsky.social "will we have robots running all the marathons now?"

I'm pretty sure it was just a joke question, but it really snapped me back to reality.

Building Modern Databases with the FDAP Stack • Andrew Lamb & Olimpiu Pop • GOTO 2025 YouTube video by GOTO Conferences

Building Modern Databases with the FDAP Stack • Andrew Lamb & Olimpiu Pop • GOTO 2025

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gd-m...

Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs): How To Survive the Zombie Apocalypse - Picture Me Coding Erik became fascinated with CRDTs while working on a project, so we're talking about how they work, how they simplify some distributed systems, and how they might protect you from zombies.Conflict-Fre...

In this episode we talk about CRDTs. If you don't know what those are, you should listen. It might save you from zombies. www.picturemecoding.com/2222783/epis...

A purple octopus with an inquisitive expression on his face, holding a magnifying glass to his right eye.

BTW I have Mr. Squidler stickers! Come find me if you want one. How could you say no to this lil' guy 😍

#kubecon #kubernetes