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Questions

Questions answered on Ryan Peterman

65 questions from 10 episodes of Ryan Peterman, each answered in our own words from our transcript of the episode.

▸The Best Programmer Brian Kernighan (Bell Labs) Ever Met

2026-11-05 · 4 questions

Q1Who does Brian Kernighan say is the best programmer he ever met?Q2How did Ken Thompson write the first version of Unix in three weeks?Q3What did Doug McIlroy contribute to Unix and Bell Labs, according to Brian Kernighan?Q4Why was Richard Hamming a Bell Labs department head with no reports?

▸Turing Award Winner: The Difference Between a CPU, GPU, and TPU | David Patterson

2026-11-04 · 6 questions

Q1How does David Patterson explain the difference between a CPU, a GPU and a TPU?Q2Why did GPUs become the main chip for machine learning, according to David Patterson?Q3Why did Jensen Huang fund CUDA in 2006, according to David Patterson?Q4What made Google's TPU so much faster than GPUs, according to David Patterson?Q5What is brain float 16 and why did Google create it, according to David Patterson?Q6Why does David Patterson say CPUs still matter in the age of AI accelerators?

▸Microsoft Distinguished Eng: Why And How To Port Your Entire Codebase to Rust | Stephen Toub

2026-11-02 · 8 questions

Q1Why did Stephen Toub rewrite the GitHub Copilot runtime from TypeScript to Rust?Q2Why did Stephen Toub choose Rust over C#, Go or Java for the Copilot runtime?Q3How did Stephen Toub's incremental Copilot port compare with Bun's big-bang Rust rewrite?Q4How did Stephen Toub catch regressions when AI agents ported the Copilot codebase to Rust?Q5What did Stephen Toub say about AI agents changing tests to make code pass?Q6How did Stephen Toub review hundreds of thousands of lines of AI-written code?Q7How much did Stephen Toub's AI-driven Copilot Rust port cost in tokens and time?Q8How does Stephen Toub decide whether a codebase rewrite or migration is worth doing?

▸Atoms CTO: What He Learned Working At Amazon and Google | Brian Attwell

2026-10-30 · 5 questions

Q1What did Brian Attwell, CTO of Atoms, learn from working at Google?Q2Why do big tech companies tolerate employees who do no work, according to Brian Attwell?Q3Why does Brian Attwell say standards fall over time at every company?Q4Did Google once keep idle smart people on staff so competitors could not hire them?Q5Why does Brian Attwell think paying high performers less after equity gains is unjust?

▸Barbara Liskov (Turing Award): How the Liskov Substitution Principle Got Its Name

2026-10-28 · 7 questions

Q1How did the Liskov substitution principle get its name, according to Barbara Liskov?Q2What does Barbara Liskov say the Liskov substitution principle actually means?Q3Is Viewstamped Replication the same as Paxos, according to Barbara Liskov?Q4Why does Barbara Liskov think Paxos became better known than Viewstamped Replication?Q5What was Argus, Barbara Liskov's programming language for distributed programs?Q6What got Barbara Liskov into distributed computing?Q7How did Barbara Liskov's MIT teaching with John Guttag shape her view of type hierarchy?

▸MIT Professor: What is Strong ETH (Recently Proven False By OpenAI) | Ryan Williams

2026-10-27 · 6 questions

Q1What is the strong exponential time hypothesis, as Ryan Williams explains it?Q2How does Ryan Williams say strong ETH relates to the P versus NP question?Q3Does MIT professor Ryan Williams believe the strong exponential time hypothesis is true?Q4Why does Ryan Williams say SAT is easy in practice but still hard in the worst case?Q5How did Ryan Williams turn failed attempts to refute strong ETH into other results?Q6Why does Ryan Williams find it useful to assume strong ETH is false?

▸Brian Kernighan: Inside Bell Labs, The Best Programmer, Why C Won

2026-10-26 · 8 questions

Q1Why did Bell Labs produce so many inventions, according to Brian Kernighan?Q2How did Bell Labs evaluate its researchers, as Brian Kernighan describes it?Q3Why does Brian Kernighan think the C programming language succeeded?Q4How was awk created, according to Brian Kernighan?Q5Where does the name grep come from, as Brian Kernighan explains it?Q6What happened when Brian Kernighan demoed Unix to CIA director William Colby?Q7What does Brian Kernighan think LLMs are doing to computer science education?Q8Does Brian Kernighan trust AI-generated code like SQL from Claude?

▸New Grad (IC3) to Staff (IC6) at Meta in 3 Years | Simon Kindström

2026-10-23 · 7 questions

Q1How did Simon Kindström go from new grad IC3 to staff IC6 at Meta in three years?Q2What is the difference between performance ratings and promotions at Meta, according to Simon Kindström?Q3What is a Redefines Expectations (RE) rating at Meta and how did Simon Kindström earn one?Q4How did a previous Meta internship help Simon Kindström get promoted quickly?Q5What does Simon Kindström say separates IC5 from staff engineer (IC6) at Meta?Q6What does Simon Kindström mean by delegation is not abdication for engineering leads?Q7How did Simon Kindström get promoted to IC5 at Meta even though his project fell short?

▸Microsoft Distinguished Eng: His Principal Engineer Promotion Story | David Fowler

2026-10-21 · 6 questions

Q1How did David Fowler get promoted to principal engineer at Microsoft?Q2What does David Fowler say separates a senior engineer from a principal engineer?Q3Why did David Fowler burn out as an architect on the .NET Core rewrite?Q4How did David Fowler learn to delegate work while on the SignalR team?Q5Which habits does David Fowler say hurt engineers trying to lead at scale?Q6What was Kudu, the Azure project David Fowler built before .NET Core?

▸The Story Behind Creating DNS | Paul Mockapetris

2026-10-19 · 8 questions

Q1Why does Paul Mockapetris say domain names run from most specific to least specific?Q2How did ARPANET computers find each other before DNS, according to Paul Mockapetris?Q3How does Paul Mockapetris explain DNS root servers and caching?Q4Who pays for the DNS root servers, according to Paul Mockapetris?Q5Does Paul Mockapetris think DNS is a serious privacy risk?Q6What is the story of the .nu domain that Paul Mockapetris tells?Q7Why did ARPA and NSF turn down Paul Mockapetris's later DNS research proposals?Q8What does Paul Mockapetris say about qualified small business stock and startup taxes?

Questions from every show →

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