The Underbar logo

About The Underbar

A campfire story, with too many details

The Concept

If there's one thing I like more than writing code, it's talking about code. My best memories about code usually involve a late night discussion with a drink in one hand and no keyboard in the other.

In 2024, I seriously started listening to podcasts. "Live conversation with eventual interventions from the audience" is the format I find to be the closest to the bar conversations I like so much, and I'd love to listen to (and chat with) my friends from the Perl community, talking about random topics.

So, I figured I should just try it! How hard can it be to setup a conference call, invite a few interesting people, pick a topic to start the conversation, hit "record", and stop after roughly one hour? And make the recording public afterwards, for others to enjoy.

The Name

The podcast's name comes from a quick brainstorm with Olaf Alders on the TPRF Slack, on December 27, 2024. The conversation went like this:

And just like this, in the span of ten minutes, we had a name.

The Logo

On January 12, 2025, I was chatting about the podcast on IRC with Thibault Duponchelle. After announcing that Ricardo and Olaf had agreed to be regular hosts on the podcast, I exposed my idea for the logo (in French):

<BooK> Logo pour the underbar: un $_
<BooK> Le _ représente le zinc, et le $ la tireuse à bière.
       On pose une choppe entre les deux, et boum.
<BooK> Trois caractères Unicode.
<tib> OK bonne idée pour le logo

Translation:

<BooK> Logo for the underbar: a $_
<BooK> The _ represents the counter, and the $ the beer tap.
       Put a beer mug in between, and boom.
<BooK> Three Unicode characters.
<tib> OK good idea for the logo

Here's what a traditional French "zinc" looks like:

A traditional French zinc
(Photo from https://francewithvero.com/blog/le-zinc-a-french-cafe-icon/)

The Inspiration (or, How We Got Here)

I love learning about the history of science (especially mathematics) and computing. I also love stories (not to mention gossip), especially when told by those who were there. To quote (and translate) my grandmother: "History is first and foremost stories".

At work, I was inspired by a few colleagues:

In 2022, I started recording Dino AMA calls, where long-tenured colleagues about to leave the company would reply to questions from colleagues on a Zoom call. At the time of writing (June 2025), I did three.

At work, some of my colleagues have a lot of experience (inside or outside the company), and we sometimes engage in "old men ranting calls" about random (work or non-work) topics. Although they often contain nuggets of wisdom and plenty of sarcasm, we haven't recorded them so far. (They would be too controversial to share anyway...)

This podcast also would not exist if I hadn't listened to:

On the Metal and Digital Citizen featured interviews of computing luminaries.

Advent of Computing is dedicated to the history of the field, from its inception until the rise of the personal computer, and very well researched.

Oxide and Friends feels like being in a bar conversation with other technical people. I don't always fully understand what they're talking about, but I definitely like what I hear.

Bryan Cantrill of 0xide has strong opinions about sharing engineering knowledge, which he presented at GOTO Chicago 2023.


(a slide from Bryan Cantrill's talk Social Audio as a Vector For Engineering Wisdom)

The key point from the slide above:

So, it's no surprise that towards the end of 2024, I had been thinking for some time about setting up something like this with people I know. I had first been thinking about having those conversations with colleagues, but corporate security and secrecy wouldn't be amenable to that (even if we limited us to internal communications).

On November 28, 2024, I finally exposed my idea to Olaf Alders, who replied:

Honestly, it sounds like a great idea and possibly a low friction way to share information.

I first had to finish the article I had promised for the Perl Advent Calendar, but the idea had taken root, and I had talked with too many people about it already.

So I eventually stopped planning for perfection, got Olaf and Ricardo on board, invited more people involved with the new Perl logo (the topic of the Perl Advent entry published the day after mine), talked with Amber Krawczyk from TPRF to setup a Zoom meeting with recording. And on January 10, 2025, the magic happened.

The Format

In the beginning, I was keen on the idea of interventions from the audience, but that requires live streaming which was a bit complicated to start with.

It only took me a few episodes to figure out that inviting the right mix of people was the best way to produce a great conversation. Along with preparation, and sufficient knowlegde and understanding of the topic.

The most important thing for me is not pleasing the audience: it's OK if you don't understand everything that's being said. I plan on having transcripts, accompanied with copious notes and links.

My long-term goal for this podcast is that it can serve as a "primary source" (as Sean Haas from Advent of Computing calls them) for historians of computing (and the bit I know the best: Perl).

The License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

This is not the (bar|podcast) you are looking for

First of all, The Underbar is not the first Perl podcast:

Although I thought I had found an original and inventive name for this podcast, it turns out I didn't really.

The name is already used by other podcasts:

And also bars: