TODEPOND TIMES: Future of Co-ding

Hello? Hello! It's time for another weekly edition of the...

🐸 TODEPOND TIMES 🐸

A few months ago, I was asked to appear on the Future of Coding podcast. Ivan Reese sent me a message to that effect. However, there was something unusual about his request.

My appearance on the show would be a secret - a surprise.

The Future of Coding

I was really excited about the podcast! In part because I'm a big fan of it.

Ivan and Jimmy like to mess around with the format of what a "show can be". (They even did the "interrupting interruptions" thing before I did). EDIT: I can't find the exact podcast episode where they did it. If you know which one it was, please let me know and I'll add a link. EDIT EDIT: Ivan himself told me that it's this one. The dynamic between Ivan and Jimmy works really well, and their recent spin-off episode was one of their best.

So... yeah. I felt a little bit of pressure to do an OK job.

Ultimately, the recording process was quite a surreal experience. It was about INTERCAL, a very weird programming language. To match this, we were going to make something very weird as well.

"Are you sure you don't need me to record anything else?" is the question I asked Ivan dozens of times.

"No, I think I can make this work."

DreamBerd

If you didn't know, I have a joke programming language called DreamBerd. It's not real - it's imaginary. It's not very practical either. All of its features are ridiculous, toying with the boundaries of what a language can be.

I started it as a little hobby, scribbling down ideas on the bus. But now, it's grown into something stranger.

This week... DreamBerd exploded. It got to the top of HackerNews (a vile website). And it was the fastest growing project of the day on GitHub (a social media network for nerds).

My notifications are non-stop filled with people suggesting ideas for DreamBerd. I had to turn them off for a while!

And I keep seeing DreamBerd pop up in new places. It's exciting and daunting at the same time.

DreamBerding

By the way, work has now begun on making DreamBerd for real!

It's not my work. Two members of the DreamBerd community have teamed up to start building it.

I spoke to one of them! Riccardo, from Italy, helpfully explained to me how the project will work. In true DreamBerd spirit, they're keeping it as tricky and as messy as possible.

It's at a very early stage. But it feels bonkers to me that they're working from 'real' DreamBerd files.

Future of Code

I did a little talk about DreamBerd at the Future of Code meetup here in London. People seemed to really enjoy it!

It felt more like doing a standup routine than a tech talk. Luckily, most of the jokes landed! It's always fun finding out what tickles people the most.

People really got into the spirit of it. Someone set their LinkedIn profile job description to DreamBerd. And lots of people wanted to talk to me about DreamBerd afterwards.

I used to do quite a bit of comedy stuff on stage, but it's been around 8 years since that — so it was a bit of fun to revisit that sort of thing again. Although... I hate standup.

The Future of Co-ding

The podcast episode got released last week. (Which is probably why DreamBerd exploded). I'm really pleased with how it came out! Ivan did a great job at editing it. Somehow, it's even madder than I expected, which is a good thing!

I'm really glad that people have now enjoyed the madness of INTERCAL as much as I did. And I'm so thankful to have been part of that.

By the way, I'm continually impressed by Ivan's music and sound design. Maybe I should get him to help with the SandPond Saga.

Oh that's right! The SandPond Saga! I'm making a new video for the Sandpond Saga! There was lots of progress this week, but DreamBerd has dominated this update. I'll fill you in next week.

Thank you so much for supporting me and my projects! I can't quite believe how many people are joining now. I really means the world to me. I hope you enjoy following along! And I hope you have a great week. 🐸

Days since tode fell asleep: 156
Days since bot went missing: 121