CoRecursive started because I did some episodes as a host on software engineering daily and it was lots of fun so I decided to start one of my own. The first 4 episodes were originally on software engineering daily.
Originally the idea was to give some platform to the areas of computing I was interested in, heavy use of types and functional programming but I think I really found my place as a podcast when I started to focus on peoples stories. So rather than tell me about SQLite, it is tell me about the story behind creating SQLite.
You are so polite, I am impressed with your ability not to push back on the interviewees. In this episode I would have asked "would sqlite really be worse today if you hadn't done your own VCS.". But I think I wouldn't be half as successful as you, people don't wanna be implicitly criticised by their interviewer :P
> would sqlite really be worse today if you hadn't done your own VCS.
Yes. Fossil is not only the VCS for SQLite, Fossil is also built around SQLite. SQLite is a core component of Fossil. Thus, when I am working on Fossil, I am forced to interact with SQLite as a "user" instead of as a "developer". In geek-speak, it forces me to "eat my own dog food". This, in turn, prompts me to add needed features to SQLite and more generally to make the SQLite interfaces friendlier to application-developers.
One recent example: SQLite version 3.34.0 added the ability to include two or more recursive terms in a Recursive Common Table Expression. (See item 2 in https://www.sqlite.org/releaselog/3_34_0.html and subsequent links.) This feature was added specifically so that I could more easily write SQL statements that would walk the Fossil version history DAG, as described by the https://www.sqlite.org/lang_with.html#rcex3 link.
I did not develop Fossil with this "dogfooding" idea in mind. It was an unanticipated benefit of Fossil. But in the end, I think it might have been the most important benefit of using Fossil instead of some other VCS.
I'm glad you like the podcast! I do push back when something doesn't sound right. I agree though that I could have asked more about fossil. I really didn't look into fossil that much when I prepared for the interview so it was a bit of a blind spot for me.
Not included in the interview is a discussion we had about types. I really think SQLite should be stricter in enforcement of types and Richard doesn't buy it. I may include it in a future bonus episode but the reason I cut it was it didn't really include any details about story of SQLite, it was just two people disagreeing about types. I've done a lot of episodes about types in the past and I wanted this to be about build SQLite, and not about types.
I quite disagree. It's boring when they just say their talking points. The guests are experts in their field, they can handle some pushback and it would be much more educational for the rest of us to hear the answers to the questions we're really wondering about.
It doesn't have to be "implicit criticism", but an open mind doesn't blindly accept stuff, ask for justification.
