Compose

About Compose

Compose is an interview podcast for software developers using the Rust programming language to build a better planet. Software's impact on our society is increasing every day. Let's pull things apart so we can learn how to put things back together. Interview guests are typically the maintainers of open source projects, startup founders, leaders within the technology industry, and the occasional critic. Each episode aims to teach something new and provoke thoughts that'll last until the next episode and beyond. Interviews follow a rough format. We start with something that our guest thinks is interesting. This will typically involve talking tech and/or recent events. This section means that you'll find something to geek out about within the first 5-10mins of every episode. Then we learn more about our guest(s) by discussing their recent background and how they came to be interested in the thing they're interested in. At this point, we've really started to gain an understanding of their personal system at play and the forces that are upon it. We'll try to expand on some of those forces. While every interview is unique, some of the themes include the pressures of software engineering within a team, security, creating open source technology, the growth of the Rust language, and trends within the software industry. Compose is hosted by Tim Clicks, also known as Tim McNamara. Tim is an avid supporter of Rust, and continues to advocate for the language and its promise of reliable, efficient software.

Publisher

Tim McNamara (timClicks)

Category

science · technology

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

29 Jul 2024

Latest episode

7 Aug 2025

Latest episodes

11 of 11 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   7 Aug 2025TRANSCRIPT

   David Sankel – Rust and C++ Interop

   David Sankel from Adobe and who sits on the C++ Standards Committee discusses efforts to make it easier for Rust and C++ to work together.

2. 

   12 Jun 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Guillaume Gomez – Rustdoc as a case study of developer tooling

   Guillaume Gomez discusses his long-term work on Rustdoc, highlighting the challenges and rewards of creating user-friendly documentation for the Rust programming language in this interview.

3. 

   3 Jun 2025TRANSCRIPT

   David Lattimore – Faster Linker, Faster Builds

   David Lattimore introduces his linker called "wild" and discusses how it can lead to faster builds, in this interview episode.

4. 

   25 Jan 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Rahul Kumar: Why verify Rust’s standard library?

   AWS and the Rust Foundation are jointly sponsoring an initiative to verify the Rust standard library. Learn why from the initiative's creator, Rahul Kumar.

5. 

   25 Dec 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Reliable software: An interview with Jon Gjengset

   Listen to Jon Gjengset discuss how to write high quality Rust software and keep it that way.

6. 

   10 Dec 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Building Rust: an interview with Nell Shamrell-Harrington

   Nell Shamrell-Harrington shares insights on Rust project governance, maintainer wellbeing, and her career journey, highlighting the importance of community-driven development and maintainer support.

7. 

   21 Sept 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Creating tech tools for humans – Interview with Hazel Weakly

   This interview discusses erosion of human connection in tech and the importance of designing tools that empower individuals and communities. Hear how programming languages like Rust and Haskell are shaping a more hopeful, and perhaps even more wholesome, future.

8. 

   29 Aug 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Learn Rust, train doctors – Interview with Caroline Morton

   Dr Caroline Morton has created software that exposes trainee doctors to the cognitive overload of the emergency room. Learn about the technical challenges and why her team turned to the Rust programming language. The episode touches on her personal story. She’s been writing software for 9 years, including 4 years full time, and is still […]

9. 

   14 Aug 2024TRANSCRIPT

   Systems Software for Linux with Rust – Interview with Zeeshan Ali Khan

   Zeeshan Ali Khan is the maintainer of the zbus crate, a pure Rust implementation of the D-Bus protocol. Zeeshan has been around Linux and embedded/mobile Linux for a long time – even moving to Finland to work for Nokia before the company moved to Windows Phone. The interview starts with creation of zbus—a pure Rust […]

10. 

    7 Aug 2024TRANSCRIPT

    Supercharging Python Tooling – An Interview with Charlie Marsh

    Charlie Marsh is the founder of Astral, the company behind Python’s fastest code formatter: ruff. Astral is also the home of the open source uv and rye projects, which make installing Python packages much faster than they have been with pip. In the interview, Charlie discusses many things, including his own career, building an open […]

11. 

    29 Jul 2024TRANSCRIPT

    Rob Ede – Actix Web, Life as an Open Source Maintainer, Supply-chain Security

    Summary The episode explores Rob‘s views on open source maintenance, along with many interesting side quests relating to modern software development. We start the discussion by talking about Rob’s journey to becoming a maintainer of Actix Web, a web framework written in Rust. This moves into a discussion about the project’s adoption by companies like […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Spotify

3.9 / 5

13 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 35 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

36

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

84

Contact Compose

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.