Hello and welcome back to another weekly episode of the...
🐸 TODEPOND PONDCAST 🐸
What's new this week?
Strange loop
I went to the final Strange Loop conference in St Louis (pronounced St Louis). It was AMAZING.
I met SO MANY people that I've become familiar with over the past few years. Some of them are people that I've worked with before, like Max Bittker, Ivan Reese and Jimmy Miller. And many others are people that I respect and have spoken to in the past, including Elliot Evans and... ok I'm not going to list them all out here but I might trawl through everyone when I get back.
I also met a load of lovely new people. Quite a few people approached me over the course of the event and said something along the lines of "you're TodePond!?"
They were very kind about my videos. It's always nice to receive nice feedback, but it's extra special when it's in-person.
Strange loop's talks were also fab. Devine's one really resonated with me. I need to do something with the inspiration it gave me.
At the venue, people sporadically opened up laptops and showed off weird coding stuff to passers-by. I did this a bunch too. This was very useful. I was able to see which bits impressed people and which bits didn't. I learned a lot!
Arroost!
I was able to demo CellPond, ScreenPond, and also... Arroost.
To make this possible I worked on it non-stop on the flight over. I made a bunch of progress, which I'll go into in more detail next week. But the main thing you need to know is:
Arroost's time travel mechanic now works. You can play with it. You can send pulses forwards through time, and you can send pulses backwards through time. It looks so odd! It's very confusing and unintuitive! I'm so pleased with how it worked out!
Because of how confusing it is, I found it hard to teach it to people. In the earlier demos I did, people struggled to learn it, so they didn't appreciate it as much. But as time went on, I tried to figure out how people got 'lost' in their understanding. And I think I got better at introducing the core concepts to people.
It's always so helpful to see people's live reactions to this stuff. It'll make the video better! Thanks to everyone who has been subjected to one of my demos, or some of my material over the last few days. I apologise if you were exposed to something that didn't land.
Future of code
I asked Ivan Reese to record the audio for this week's TODEPOND PONDCAST. I'm not entirely sure what the artistic goal behind it is, but it feels like a good idea.
I suppose that... this week has been a nice reminder of all the lovely people that I've become friends with through the world of weird coding.
Coding is often seen as a lonely thing, and I think that it can be. But for me, I'm very lucky to say that it hasn't. It's been the opposite. And I wish that more people knew that.
It's not just about coding. I think it's true for any hobby. There's a whole world of people out there to meet.
If you don't know Ivan, he's the host of the Future of Code podcast. He also makes a programming tool called Hest.
For me, the best thing about Hest is how it focuses on continuity. I find it hard to explain concisely but basically: When something happens in Hest, you can follow it along at every point along the way. It doesn't jump anywhere.
Anyway, thanks for listening to this unusual episode. I've been making more of these public recently. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, it's nice to be able to share these updates with more people. But on the other hand, I also want to keep these as a special exclusive for paying supporters. If you have any opinions or feedback on this, I'd love to hear it.
And of course, I want to thank you immensely for supporting me and my projects. I really mean it when I say that I wouldn't be able to do all of this without your help. Thank you thank you thank you. And hey, wherever you are in the world, whatever you're doing... I hope you have a great week 🐸
Days since tode fell asleep: 256
Days since bot went missing: 230
TODEPOND PONDCAST: Strange loop