React, it turns out, is not what lies at the end of the web development rainbow. In this episode, Esko, Juha and Jussi talk about achieving super fast user interfaces by combining functional programming techniques and embedding observables directly into the DOM with Harmaja.
Guests:
Juha Paananen started coding with Commodore computers in the 80s and is a proud holder of both IBM WebSphere and XML certificates. Juha is the author of Harmaja, but perhaps best known in the open source community as the creator of the Bacon.js library. He loves functional programming, electronics and generally writing stuff from scratch.
Jussi Saurio quit his job as an English teacher in late 2016 and started teaching himself software development. After three months of intense self-study, he scored his first tech job, and the rest is (fairly recent) history.
Host:
Esko Lahti is an engineer who still remembers the struggle of using Apache Wicket and JSP to create web applications.
Episode Links:
About Reaktor:
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast by Reaktor, a strategy, design and technology company changing how the world works.
@ReaktorNow
#FPMPod
GraphQL has arguably changed the entire paradigm of writing full-stack web applications. In today’s episode, Esko, Ian and Dirk discuss GraphQL, Apollo, and Relay, and why they can, in good conscience, be called a web developer’s cheat codes.
Guests:
Ian Fosbery is a big believer in good communication—both face-to-face, and through code. For the past 15 years, he has been building products, writing code, and getting excited about everything from good software design to devops and scale.
Dirk Geurs is a technologist interested in creating high-performing software teams. Over the last year, he worked on various cross-platform mobile applications.
Host:
Esko Lahti is an engineer who is lazy and loves to take the easy way out. (Editor’s note: No one has ever witnessed Esko take an easy way out of anything.)
Episode Links:
About Reaktor:
Form Pull Merge Push is a podcast by Reaktor, a strategy, design and technology company changing how the world works.
@ReaktorNow
#FPMPod
Still writing bespoke functions and boilerplate to immutably manipulate a complex data structure? Statically typed optics will both do the heavy lifting for you, AND give your TypeScript hustle an unforeseen boost.
Guest:
Petri Lehtinen started programming with Basic in the mid-90s. Open source projects and functional programming in typed programming languages are close to his heart.
Host:
Esko Lahti is an engineer who saw the light after first encountering the partial.lenses optics library in 2017.
Episode links:
About Reaktor:
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast by Reaktor, a strategy, design and technology company changing how the world works.
Reaktor is always on the lookout for bright software developers to work in health, security, emerging technologies, and much more. See www.reaktor.com/careers.
@ReaktorNow
#FPMPod
Multiple threads or only one thread, and why should it matter? Blocking or non-blocking IO, and what benefits do each of them offer? What’s the problem of using callbacks? Hold on to your hats, folks – in this episode, Esko, Andy and Otto plow through some of the most fundamental questions regarding runtime environments.
Andy Davies is a software developer who likes making other developers’ lives easier, usually by providing libraries, tooling, infrastructure, build systems, and ways of working. He likes keeping things simple. He doesn’t like Kubernetes.
Otto Paaso also likes simple things (and static types). For the past 12 years he has been working on embedded, desktop and web products, as well as the necessary backend and infrastructure technologies to make things rock.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who wants to know how things work under the hood, no matter how many threads are involved. He has no horse in the Node.js vs JVM race.
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast by Reaktor, a strategy, design and technology company changing how the world works.
Reaktor is always on the lookout for bright software developers to work in health, security, emerging technologies, and much more. See www.reaktor.com/careers.
@ReaktorNow
#FPMPod
Two years ago, David and Tijn formed Amsterdam Hackers: a group of developers willing to conquer and learn from tech problems they had previously found impossible. In this episode, Esko talks to the two Amsterdam-based engineers about the group’s philosophy, as well as their two largest projects; the gbforth and Delisp.
David Vázquez grew up sitting next to his father, watching him code in Clipper. Having coded in Microsoft Access and Visual Basic, he got into Linux and C around 2002. David then learned Emacs and Lisp that introduced him to programming language design and implementations. The rest is history.
Tijn Kersjes discovered programming as a kid when he realised you can create games rather than just play them. Eventually, he decided to combine his two passions (drinking coffee and writing code) into a software development career.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who enjoys team work over solo work of any kind.
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast by Reaktor, a strategy, design and technology company changing how the world works. Reaktor has offices in New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Tokyo and Helsinki, Turku and Tampere.
Reaktor is always on the lookout for bright software developers to work in health, security, emerging technologies, and much more. See www.reaktor.com/careers.
@ReaktorNow
#FPMPod
Category theory may strike you as intimidating, but trust us, you can (and after this episode, are probably itching to) talk applicative functors and parser combinators over afterwork drinks. Listen in to learn why Esko and Antti – both of whom started programming with dynamically typed languages – are so into category theory right now that they see applications of it everywhere.
Antti Holvikari is endlessly fascinated by pure functional programming languages such as Haskell and PureScript. Software quality and personal productivity are two things he’s constantly improving.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who always wanted to learn about category theory in practice – but never knew where to start. Then he met Antti Holvikari.
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast by Reaktor, a strategy, design and technology company changing how the world works. Reaktor has offices in New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Tokyo and Helsinki, Turku and Tampere.
Reaktor is always on the lookout for bright software developers to work in health, security, emerging technologies, and much more.
@ReaktorNow
#FPMPod
Cheers to the 14th trip around the sun of the language that’s made up of data! In this episode, Esko, Matti and Toni discuss Clojure, REPL, and how you can use them in your next project.
Matti Lankinen’s programming career started from the little boy’s dream of making his own games. C++ was too hard at the time, so he started making his own programming language. It was never finished. (Hands up, who can relate?)
Toni Vanhala learned the alphabet by typing on the keyboard and copying BASIC programs his mother read aloud. A couple decades later, Toni got his Ph.D. after programming a custom gaze tracker, virtual humans that react to facial expressions, and a chair that senses emotions.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast by Reaktor, a strategy, design and technology company changing how the world works. Reaktor has offices in New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Tokyo and Helsinki, Turku and Tampere.
Reaktor is always on the lookout for bright software developers to work in health, security, emerging technologies, and much more.
@ReaktorNow
#FPMPod
Microsoft is arguably taking over the open source world. Esko, Paavo, Juuso and Sam debate the role the company plays in today’s open source community – TypeScript, GitHub, VS Code, npmjs.com and all – and discuss the advanced features of TypeScript.
Paavo Huhtala joined Reaktor at the age of 19. A self-taught hobbyist programmer since middle school, he likes pretty much everything – from writing compilers in Rust to adding that missing 0.5 pixels of left padding to the signups form’s submit button.
Juuso Mikkonen has been programming professionally since 2015 but still learns – mostly through mistakes – something new every day. His day-to-day tasks usually involve programming in TypeScript, building web services, remote teamwork and managing time zone differences.
Sam Grönblom is from Finland but relocated to Tokyo a decade ago. He’s partial to pragmatic, statically typed functional languages, and he wishes he could only program in F#.
Esko Lahti is a programmer who loves to have his weekly mind blowing experience caused by a yet another neat TypeScript typing system trick.
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast by Reaktor, a strategy, design and technology company changing how the world works. Reaktor has offices in New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Tokyo and Helsinki, Turku and Tampere.
Reaktor is always on the lookout for bright software developers to work in health, security, emerging technologies, and much more.
@ReaktorNow
#FPMPod
Fork Pull Merge Push is back with new voices, new topics, and insights! The first episode of season two takes us closer to user experience and digital anthropology. In this episode, we talk about ego and bias, life and death in a digital context. We discuss how important it is for software developers to master their soft skills like empathy and communication in order to build successful products or services. Anna Haverinen, Design Anthropologist at Reaktor, shares her hard-earned lessons and puts some of the common ideas in the tech world into perspective. This is also the co-hosting debut for brilliant Anna Fröblom. Welcome Anna! 🤟
Guest
Anna Haverinen is a Design Anthropologist and she holds a PhD in Digital Culture. She works at the intersection of design, technology, and business by providing strategic and qualitative insight into people, communities, and individuals. In her academic work, she has studied grief and death in online environments, and in the past years, she has worked with clients such as UPM, Suunto, Aarikka, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals. Her favorite thing in the world is Fazer chocolate.
Hosts
Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.
References:
About Reaktor
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.
We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!
Today’s episode is all about artificial intelligence, data science, and software development. We look at AI from technological and business perspectives. Henrik Aalto, a business-savvy data scientist at Reaktor, shares his thoughts on different use cases of AI and why it might actually be the last resort in solving business problems. We discuss when and why AI is feasible in software development projects and what developers need to understand about it.
Guest
Henrik Aalto is a data science generalist with a background in systems analysis and operations research. He works in the intersection of technology and business and loves creating data-driven solutions to complex problems. Despite his passion for AI, sometimes he thinks a simple BI-report will do all that’s needed. In his spare time, he likes to keep it simple – cook from season’s veggies and do mostly outdoor sports that fit the weather.
Hosts
Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.
References
Hidden Technical Debt in Machine Learning Systems
What robots want? Hearing the inner voice of a robot
No matter the levels of automation nor intelligence – your tools always need a human touch
About Reaktor
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.
We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!
In today's episode, we talk with product designer Ross Langley about the feeling of belonging. We talk about change — whether it's changing your career path or moving to another country. Ross walks us through the practicalities of relocation. About different working cultures, in Finland and the US. About dealing with the pandemic, impostor syndrome, and difficult clients. Ross opens up about his experience of burn-out and how he recovered from it. We know that it's common for people in the tech industry to move places for work, so we hope Ross' story will help you. p.s. Reaktor has open positions in offices around the globe. Make sure to check them out and join the team: https://www.reaktor.com/careers
Guest
Ross Langley is a human-centered designer from Reaktor Helsinki office. He loves helping teams excel in challenging environments. You can see Ross shine when he does concept modeling, validates ideas, or makes celebrity impressions.
Hosts
Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.
About Reaktor
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.
We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!
In this episode, we discuss geographic information system (GIS) - not a well-known domain to many. Henna Kalliokoski, a GIS professional and functional programming enthusiast will share her knowledge on GIS data, coordinate systems, and e.g. accessibility. GIS data can be used in many different ways and she will shed light on e.g. how open source communities contribute to GIS data and service development.
Guest
Henna Kalliokoski a full-stack developer and a GIS professional at Reaktor. Henna gets inspired by people and wants to make the world a better place. She believes in the power of open source and open data. In her free time, Henna learns Chineese and enjoys painting.
Hosts
Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.
Useful links
Microsoft AI buildings in Humanitarian OpenStreetMap
About Reaktor
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.
We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!
In today’s episode, we talk about open source, developer communities, and side-projects. Jesse Luoto from Reaktor Helsinki shares his hard-earned lessons from planning, launching, and promoting dozens of side projects of all shapes and sizes. What’s the right balance between the speed and quality of your open source project? When should you launch, how to promote your work, and how to maintain it with the help of dev communities? Tune in to get answers to these and many more questions.
Guest
Jesse Luoto is a full-stack developer and an open-source advocate at Reaktor. Jesse is driven by imperfection and irritation. He likes to solve practical problems and makes indie games in his free time.
Hosts
Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.
References
Google Analytics library (37M monthly downloads)
Open collective (they have Fiscal Host service now!)
About Reaktor
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.
We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!
What’s the best way to learn a new skill or technology? And how make sure you got it right? In this episode, we talk about continuous learning with Laura Beatris, full-stack developer from Reaktor Amsterdam. Laura opens up about why teaching others also helps her grow professionally. She also shares her learning techniques & processes.
Guest
Laura Beatris is a Software Developer at Reaktor, originally from Brasil but currently based in the Netherlands. In addition to writing code, Laura also loves learning by teaching others. She’s currently studying more in-depth GraphQL and Elixir.
When not coding, she’s playing music and traveling around the world. Concerts and music festivals are the ultimate reasons to travel for Laura. She loves to take photos of singers and fans having their best time.
Hosts
Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.
References
Laura’s social media:
About Reaktor
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.
We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!
"Hello, IT. Have you tried switching it off and on again?" The role of sysadmin has quite a flat, stereotypical image in pop culture as the 'ultimate nerds'. In reality, the admin function is the backbone of any organization. They are the enablers that ensure you have the means to do your work well. They are guardians that look after the company's data safety. Finally, they are the ultimate problem-solvers. In today's episode, we dive into the admin world in the Reaktor context. For that, we invited Robin Laurén, a full-stack admin, who's been with Reaktor for over nine years. We talk about what qualities make a great sysadmin and why empathy and people skills are as necessary as tech skills. We touch upon the topics of data security and mobile device management (MDM). Finally, Robin shares some fascinating stories from his years of experience working in IT.
Guest
Robin Laurén is a full-stack admin who’s been delivering hugs to users, workstations, servers, and networks since 2001. Robin aspires to provide usable and honest security. His main objective is to enable people to do their best work. Outside of work, Robin is interested in singing, theatre, IoT and home automation, photography, radio, and video production.
Hosts
Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.
References
Robin’s ex-boss: José Ramos-Horta (then foreign minister, now president, of Timor-Leste)
Robin’s theatre gigs:
Robin’s blog, Learning in public
Robin’s dog Kelvin 🐶
About Reaktor
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.
We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!
It's 2022, and we don't need to convince anyone that data management and analytics are essential for any business. Whether you're a big corporation, a high-tech startup, or you sell DIY jewelry online — data is everywhere. The better you know your data, the better you understand it — the better results you get across the board. That said, in many organizations, analytics are still often put on the back burner. Why? We invited analytics expert Matias Muhonen to talk about that in this episode. We touch upon the basics of analytics, the whys and hows of data collection, management, and security. Tune in!
Guest
Matias Muhonen is an analyst, make-it-happener and a full-stack developer. He has been gathering and analysing data, doing experimentation, building services and making work better at Reaktor for six years now. Matias’s passion is creating online services that produce actual outcomes and both business and end-user value. In his free time he enjoys cycling both on paved and unpaved surfaces. Matias is also interested in philosophy and psychology — and trying to better understand the world and us humans.
Hosts
Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.
Esko Lahti is an engineer who now works in the company that got him into Clojure. Now, his party trick at meetups is to rapid-fire through an extensive list of parentheses jokes.
References
Google Analytics – good default analytics tool
Klipfolio – simple but powerful tool for visualising data
No analytics, no outcomes, feature factory
Good books:
General thinking for everybody
Experimentation and Growth Hacking
About Reaktor
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a strategy, design, and technology company changing how the world works.
We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. We have open positions in New York, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Lisbon, and more. Check them out and apply today!
Fork Pull Merge Push is back! In season three, we talk about the future of work and how this future will look for us, people working in tech. To kick things off, we invited Miku and Pauliina to talk about software engineering and team dynamics — how the roles have been shaping, what the current trends and challenges are, and how we can shape the future of our profession. Tune in and join our semi-practical, semi-philosophical conversation.
Guests
Pauliina started her career as a communications consultant, but slowly life took her back to her childhood hobby – coding. She moved all the way to Australia to study at a coding bootcamp and has now been working as a software developer for over 5 years. She still thinks it was the best decision of her life. What she loves most about coding is how tangible it feels to build software one piece at a time and how rewarding it is to solve problems with technology. In her free time, you will find her on a yoga mat or wandering in a forest.
With nearly 20 years of experience, Mikael is a passionate, future-oriented technology leader with a cultivated interest in cutting-edge technologies and the methodologies of creating exceptional digital products. While he currently has limited time to actually code at work, he still does it as a hobby. Mikael is a fan of functional programming and loves exploring new tech, surfing, and cooking.
Mikael’s core expertise and interests are the design of technology organizations, technology strategy, business, and digital strategy, innovation, software and enterprise architectures, modern process methodologies, modern leadership, self-organization, systems thinking, data, and AI.
Host
Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.
Guest Host
Ross Langley is a human-centered designer from Reaktor Helsinki. He loves helping teams excel in challenging environments. Ross shines when he does concept modeling, validates ideas, or makes celebrity impressions.
References:
About Reaktor
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a creative technology partner for forward-thinking companies and societies, based in Helsinki, New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Lisbon, and Tokyo.
We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. Check our open positions and apply now!
We continue to talk about the future of work. In today's episode, we look into the fundamentals of Agile, team compositions and synergies. Is the future of work co-located, hybrid, or online? How can we efficiently integrate design & development teams around agile ways of working? Are there any shortcuts in that process? Our guests, Gabi & Panu, bring unique theoretical and practical perspectives to the table. Tune in and share this with your teammates. 😉
Guests
Panu Korhonen is a designer and has been in this business since -86. That is NINETEEN-eighty-six – almost 40 years ago. So he has seen quite a lot of different ways of doing design and development of digital products.
Most of the design processes have been quite bad. Therefore, he is constantly looking for ways to shake the thinking on this, especially his own.
Gabriella Ingman is an agile coach, in her 6th year at Reaktor. She facilitates, trains and coaches individuals, teams, and organizations through change toward better Monday mornings for employees, customers, and the organization as a whole. We observe, analyze and then help the customer find the best ways forward.
Host
Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.
References
Reaktor’s training, coaching, and transformation services;
Marty Cagan Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love (Silicon Valley Product Group);
Manifesto for Agile Software Development;
Designer’s four roles in agile development;
Malan, Pais, Skelton Team Topologies: Organizing Business and Technology Teams for Fast Flow;
Niklas Modig, Pär Åhlström This is Lean;
Marshall B. Rosenberg , Deepak Chopra Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life;
Sociocracy 3.0 online tools;
Daniel J. Siegel Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation;
Richard J. Hackman Collaborative Intelligence: Using Teams to Solve Hard Problems
About Reaktor
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a creative technology partner for forward-thinking companies and societies, based in Helsinki, New York, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Lisbon, and Tokyo.
We at Reaktor are looking for exceptional talent and new friends. Check our open positions and apply now!
From ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Stable Diffusion, to Amazon CodeWhisperer and GitHub Co-Pilot. Artificial intelligence is now more popular, powerful, and accessible than ever. Some greet new machine-learning tech with curiosity and fascination, while others are alarmed or even scared of what the future may hold. We continue discussing the future of work, and in today’s episode, we look at it from the AI angle. What can we expect from AI democratization, and what are the dangers of AI hype? Is today’s AI-assisted software development any better than just auto-fill? How to make sense of the emerging generative models and expand your creativity? Tune in as we address these and more questions with our guests Johan Himberg and Jimi Hyvärinen.
Guests
Jimi Hyvärinen is an Art Director with a strong background in visual storytelling through films and photography. He is also a big tech geek and loves approaching briefs through tech glasses. He’s always hungry to create unexpected concepts. For the past five-plus years, he has been working with big global brands locally in Finland, as well as at the Nordic level. He’s experienced in building brands that operate in all Nordic countries.
Johan Himberg has been marinated in working with data and AI-related things in research, start-ups, and corporations for 25 years. His field is currently called data science or even artificial intelligence.
Hosts
Anna Fröblom is a great programmer, problem-solver, hobby photographer, lego enthusiast, and simply a nice person.
Oles Datsko is a tech impostor and Fork Pull Merge Push podcast producer who oftentimes cannot resist and chips in to the conversation. In his free time, Oles loves making silly art and taking his cat Miksi on adventures.
References
Elements of AI — free online courses developed by Reaktor in partnership with the University of Helsinki and designed to be empowered, not threatened, by artificial intelligence. Together, they built the Elements of AI to teach the basics of AI to people from a wide range of backgrounds.
Do You Really Need Artificial Intelligence in Your Softwate? — Fork Pull Merge Push s2e2
jambo – maailma — music video created with Stable Diffusion
About Reaktor
Fork Pull Merge Push is a podcast created for developers by developers. It’s brought to you by Reaktor, a global technology consultancy that designs, builds, and scales transformative digital products for today’s most forward-thinking companies.