Gleam's Design and Compiler - with creator Louis Pilfold

Gleam's Design and Compiler - with creator Louis Pilfold

Author: Richard Feldman January 10, 2026 Duration: 1:11:13

Gleam programming language creator Louis Pilfold talks with Richard about Gleam's design and various challenges that came up when implementing its compiler.

- Gleam Language - https://gleam.run

- Erlang Language - https://www.erlang.org

- Elixir Language - https://elixir-lang.org

- Roc Language - https://www.roc-lang.org

- Hadoukenify https://github.com/reibitto/hadoukenify - presumably based on https://twitter.com/dr4goonis/status/476617165463105536

- "Let-generalization: Let's not?" by Ayaz Hafiz - https://github.com/roc-lang/rfcs/blob/e4f05480ed96136395bb466bf5c241e42100bf66/0010-let-generalization-lets-not.md

- "Let Should Not Be Generalised" by Simon Peyton Jones, Dimitrios Vytiniotis, and Tom Schrijvers - https://simon.peytonjones.org/let-generalised/


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.


Richard Feldman hosts Software Unscripted, a weekly podcast that feels like pulling up a chair next to a fellow developer who’s seen it all. The conversations here are off-the-cuff and genuine, delving into the realities of writing code, navigating tech trends, and the often-unspoken challenges of building software. Rather than rigid interviews or dry lectures, each episode unfolds as a natural dialogue, exploring the intersection of technology, continuous learning, and the news shaping our digital tools. You’ll hear discussions that range from practical programming techniques and language debates to broader observations about the industry’s direction, all through a lens of lived experience. This isn't about polished presentations; it's about the authentic, sometimes messy, process of thinking through problems and sharing insights. For anyone who spends their days deep in logic and syntax, this podcast offers a relatable and thoughtful space to reflect on the craft. Tune in for a candid and engaging take on the world of software, one unscripted conversation at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Software Unscripted
Podcast Episodes
Building a Terminal in Zig and Swift with Mitchell Hashimoto [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:01
Richard talks with HashiCorp cofounder Mitchell Hashimoto about a side project of his: a high-performance terminal emulator that he wrote using Zig and Swift, and which has become his daily driver terminal. Hosted on Aca…
React Hooks Design Review [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 50:00
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thinking in Array Languages with Alex Shroyer [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 47:11
Richard talks to to Alex Shroyer about his unusually extensive experiences with Array Languages like APL and J - where they come from, how they have more to offer than just extreme conciseness, and what feature creep loo…
My Contribution to the Left-Pad Incident with Simon Lydell [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:23
Richard talks with Simon Lydell, a programmer whose open-source JavaScript work ended up contributing to what might be the most infamous package-related outage in programming history. In addition to talking about that st…
Comparing Haskell to R with Will Kurt [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:42
Richard talks to Will Kurt, an AI Engineer at Hex as well as the author of both the countbayesie.com blog as well as the book Get Programming with Haskell, from Manning Publications. They talk about the book, about Haske…
Defunctionalization in a Functional Language with Ayaz Hafiz [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:12
Richard talks to Ayaz Hafiz about his work on the Roc programming language. They discuss behind-the-scenes compiler details like implementing ad-hoc polymorphism and defunctionalization using lambda sets. Along the way t…
Linking & Binary Hot Code Loading with Jakub Konka [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 53:39
Richard talks to Jakub Konka, a programmer who works on the Zig programming language. They talk about the low-level systems programming involved in Jacob's work on Zig and other projects, including things like disassembl…
From Bootcamp to Teaching Masters' Comp Sci [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:21
Richard talks to Chelsea Troy, a programmer working at Mozilla who has a side gig teaching Masters' Computer Science students at the University of Chicago. This is highly unusual, considering she does not have a computer…
Syntax and the Future of Programming with Josh Warner [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:05:40
Richard talks with Josh Warner, who has been working on making improvements to the Roc programming language, particularly around the parser and formatter. They start out talking about syntax and code formatting, but afte…
Growing Programming Communities with Ryan Haskell-Glatz [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:17
Richard talks with Ryan Haskell-Glatz, author of the open-source Elm projects elm-spa and Elm Land. They get into things like new user onboarding experiences, framework churn, and dynamics between authors and users in op…