The CS Primer Show
Episodes
E25: There is only one Beej Jorgensen
17 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Brian "Beej Jorgensen" Hall joins Oz and Charlie to dive into the joy and art of learning computer science. It's all here - achieving flow, "How to So...
E24: When is binge learning better than consistency?
01 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Oz and Charlie vibe-chat their way through respective Mathacademy experiences + reviews, leading to a discussion of "binge learning" vs more-structure...
E23: MathAcademy and the efficient pursuit of mastery
20 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
There's something about MathAcademy that just works for learning math (for both kids and adults - ask Reddit!), and we're chatting with Justin Skycak ...
E22: Building HR software for dying on Mars?
14 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ammar Mian is a software engineer and the co-founder of startup health tech company Malla - and another former student of Oz's and Bradfield School of...
E21: Make the easy things harder (with Madison Kanna)
08 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Madison Kanna is a lifelong learner and self-taught programmer who learns in public, and Madison joins Oz and Charlie to share tactics for getting thi...
E20: Jason Benn's path to ML engineering
04 Oct 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Jason Benn is an ML engineer and truly the epitome of a lifelong learner (Cal Newport even wrote about Jason in one of his books on learning!). Oz and...
E19: When failure is not an option
13 Aug 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Does your summer roadtrip across America include Saturn V Rockets, self-driving cars, dinosaur bones, and maybe Kittyhawk? Well, then you might be Oz ...
E18: Do you love programming as much as Thorsten Ball does?
23 Feb 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Programming is the best! We're chatting with Thorsten Ball (self-published author of Writing an Interpreter in Go and Writing a Compiler in Go) about ...
E17: 1000 Hours Away From Being Exceptional
18 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Zach Latta is the founder of Hack Club (hackclub.com). Zach's a high school dropout who's now helped 30k high school students around the world start t...
E16: What if textbooks were actually fun?
11 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Oz and Charlie brainstorm their "Stripe Press for kids" publishing idea! Shownotes:Klutz PressCharlie's blog post about Klutz PressHacker News discus...
E15: Finding your live wire for motivation
08 Dec 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brandon Hendrickson (creator of scienceisweird.com) says no one's ever asked him about the sabertooth tiger skull in his Zoom background - until now! ...
E14: Brit Cruise and the computer magic show
10 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Brit Cruise creates educational videos, learning experiments, and other amazing things that "connect young people with their futures as young as possi...
E13: Why some people learn much faster than others
21 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Charlie wants to talk about the latest Paul Graham essay "How to Do Great Work" and Oz wants to talk about jiu-jitsu (again).Show notes:How to Do Grea...
E12: Two self-taught engineers building large scale data systems
07 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're joined by the co-founders of Warpstream Labs, Richie Artoul and Ryan Worl, to talk about how exploring your curiosity as a software engineer can...
E11: Helping kids fall in love with computers
17 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Linda Liukas (author and illustrator of HELLO RUBY - "the world's most whimsical way to learn about computers, technology and programming") joins Oz a...
E10: The magic of Bell Labs
10 Aug 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We're joined by Jon Gertner (author of THE IDEA FACTORY: BELL LABS AND THE GREAT AGE OF AMERICAN INNOVATION) and Jimmy Soni (author of A MIND AT PLAY:...
E9: What makes programming fun? With Steve Krouse of val.town
21 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Krouse is the founder of val.town, a social network where you write and run - and maybe poke - code? Steve's a fellow computer science educatio...
E8: Should we stop doing this podcast?
30 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Are we creating evil in the world with this podcast? Should Charlie feel guilty about playing Zelda? Do any Oz-approved video games exist? What's goin...
E7: How Jesse Farmer designed the first coding bootcamp curriculum
11 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
It's time for instructional design and ed-tech history with Jesse Farmer! Jesse is the co-founder, Chief Product Officer, and academics lead of Dev B...
E6: Can you develop an engineer's mindset?
04 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Charlie wants to know if he can learn how to "think like an engineer", just like the Matt Damon/Mark Watney character in THE MARTIAN -- and Oz has som...
E5: Omar the High-Octane Learning Machine
21 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Omar Rayward attended one of the first ever coding bootcamp cohorts, now he's a Senior Staff Software Engineer. Oz and Charlie connect with Omar about...
E4: Packet losers
05 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Charlie's unexpected packet loss devolves into a live Oz networking lesson.* Matt's (my) traceroute* How Verizon and a BGP Optimizer Knocked Large Par...
E3: Return to the quantum computing cave with Felix Tripier of IonQ
02 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Oz and Charlie catch up with Felix Tripier - now a Senior Staff Software Engineer at quantum computing company IonQ - for the first time in three year...
E2: Don't let a GPT have all the fun!
02 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Is there a benefit to figuring things out the hard way? Why learn to read disassembly if you can just ask Chat GPT. We talk about this, as well as som...
E1: Doing meaningful work
02 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
We kick off The CS Primer Show with a conversation prompted by our mutual love of "You and Your Research" by Richard Hamming. This is an essay that Oz...