Runtime Arguments

Conversations about technology between two friends who disagree on plenty, and agree on plenty more.

Podcasting since 2025 • 39 episodes

Runtime Arguments

Latest Episodes

38: The Claude Shannon Episode: Surprise, Entropy, and Bits

What is Information Theory?Information is not meaningLikely things need very few bits to communicate, maybe less than 1! Unlikely things need more bits.Entropy is in the eye of the beholder. It’s what...

October 03, 2026 • 1:03:37

37: Unix Year 2038 problem and the art of underestimating

Jim walks through the classic 2038 problem — Unix's 32-bit signed timestamp (seconds since Jan 1, 1970) overflows on January 19, 2038, flipping negative and breaking anything that depends on file/time comparisons (e.g., Make). He compares it to...

September 19, 2026 • Episode 37 • 1:03:25

36: Now, let's talk about leaning the ladder (finally)

It sounds like a productivity episode. It isn't. Everything changes, all the time; what you know is perishable, and so is what you've built. The scarce resource isn't time — everyone gets the same clock — it's attention, and where it lands. So ...

September 05, 2026 • Episode 36 • 1:14:06

35: HTTP - The Unsung Hero of the Internet

Jim leads a deep dive into HTTP — how it works, why it's still the backbone of the internet, and what's changed since Tim Berners-Lee built it at CERN in 1991. Wolf and Jim cover the protocol from request methods to modern performance upgrades,...

August 22, 2026 • Episode 35 • 1:41:52

34: The Hardest Test You'll Ever Write Is Test #1

Wolf is at the "relies on tests" end of the spectrum. Jim is closer to the other end, somewhere around "how do I start?". He doesn’t need convincing. He just needs to get from zero (non-trivial) tests to one. Today’s episode is a candid discuss...

August 08, 2026 • Episode 34 • 1:24:49

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