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Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?

848 points by mngutterman 10y ago

Simply put, what are your favorite talks or trainings? It could by a one-off lecture about a specific concept or a series of talks about a language. Maybe it's a TED talk or a session from a con. Either way, what's that one talk that changed the way you think and you feel everyone needs to see?

evilgeneralist 10y ago
Can I just say anything with Bryan Cantrill?
- cheeseprocedure 10y ago
  His KVM Forum talk on porting KVM to SmartOS is probably my favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwAfJywzk8o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwAfJywzk8o
verandaguy 10y ago
I'm a fan of "Knocking my neighbors kids cruddy drone offline" by Robinson and Mithcell from DEFCON 23. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CzURm7OpAA
dudul 10y ago
Big fan of Rich Hickey. I found most of his talks really great, and applicable beyond the Clojure universe. My favorites: "Are we there yet?" and "Simple made Easy".
- jonbarker 10y ago
  +1 this comment. I do not recall in which of his talks he defines "complexity" but his definition is excellent.
  - mparr4 10y ago
    > I do not recall in which of his talks he defines "complexity" that'd be "Simple Made Easy"
- dkasper 10y ago
  Simple Made Easy is one of those talks that never gets old to me. Never heard anyone talk about the power of reducing complexity in such a clear way. Here's the link for those who are interested. https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy
  - cgag 10y ago
    This is my favorite. I also really like hammock-driven development (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc)
- corysama 10y ago
  https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub https://github.com/tallesl/Rich-Hickey-fanclub Start with, in order: Hammock Driven Development, Simple Made Easy, The Value of Values, The Database as a Value,
- swlkr 10y ago
  Agree this one is a must watch
mtmail 10y ago
"Avoiding Burnout, and other essentials of Open Source Self-Care" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbeHBnWfXUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbeHBnWfXUc
sebg 10y ago
Some previous posts: "Ask HN: What are your favorite videos relevant to entrepreneurs or startups?" -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656003 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7656003 "Ask HN: Favorite talks [video] on software development?" -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8105732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8105732
arjunnarayan 10y ago
> what's that one talk that changed the way you think and you feel everyone needs to see? Growing a Language by Guy Steele. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0
- epidemian 10y ago
  Thanks for posting this; it's my favourite talk too :) BTW, does somebody know of (or have) a better quality version of this talk? The one on YouTube has some annoying audio cuts. There used to be a copy on Google Video[1], which i don't remember having the same issues. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2359174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2359174
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/steele.pdf https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/steele.pdf A write-up of the same talk. Fantastic read and watch.
- chubot 10y ago
  This is a great talk, but what he was advocating never came to pass. He wanted to add 3 things to Java: - operator overloading - small value types on the stack (for vectors, rationals, etc.) - generic types Generic types are the only feature that made it (not without some controversy). C++ has all three features. I suppose there is some success in games and graphics using overloaded operators on vector types. But otherwise it doesn't seem like a huge win, or something that is critical for the design of a language. Python has operator overloading. I never really use it, but I guess it did allow NumPy and Pandas to exist. And TensorFlow uses it. Perhaps it boils down to the fact that Java is more of a business language, and C++ and Python have more mathematical applications, which require richer algebraic expressions of many types. But I suppose if Java had gotten operator overloading, it may have been used more for scientific computing. Perl 6 and Racket seem to be the languages that really allow creating your own language. But actually I heard Larry Wall say that they want to provide so many little languages within Perl 6 that users don't need to invent their own. Because this often makes it harder for others to read your program.
neduma 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLyobOhtO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLyobOhtO4
- jack9 10y ago
  This is Linus Torvalds & git
agumonkey 10y ago
After lots of talks I started going to the library and found out it's a lot more effective to grow knowledge. Maybe I'm too ADHD-able when watching videos.
- davidw 10y ago
  I can read way, way faster than I can listen to a video. Also, reading usually comes with charts and code I can cut and paste. Books are way more effective than videos for me.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    I used to believe this. But reading and deep understanding aren't that correlated, so speed is secondary to me. Videos have just less content than books and don't bring a lot compared to textual encodings of ideas. Maybe the context help with a book, you're by yourself, trying to imagine ideas rather than hearing it from someone else (which could cause more "acceptance" rather than understanding).
    - davidw 10y ago
      > But reading and deep understanding aren't that correlated, so speed is secondary to me With a book, it's easy to speed up and slow down as needs be.
- maaaats 10y ago
  Talks are a great way to discover interesting ideas, technologies, concepts etc. And if the talk inspired, one can then later invest in reading a book.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    Fair point, that said, don't forget libraries, they're full of gems.
  - davidw 10y ago
    But brief summary type articles are an even faster way of discovering interesting ideas, technologies, concepts, etc... You can skim them and jump around and generally expose yourself to more ideas in the same amount of time.
anondon 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI This was the first time I watched pg give a talk. It was the talk that brought about the biggest change in the way I think about the world, my ambitions. The talk was the beginning, reading more about pg, I came across his essays and then HN.
KhalilK 10y ago
Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle https://vimeo.com/36579366 https://vimeo.com/36579366 We can argue on some of the points he makes but we can all agree that the demos are very impressive.
lumannnn 10y ago
by Dave Thomas (PragDave) "LoneStarRuby 2015 - My Dog Taught Me to Code by Dave Thomas" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCBUsd52a3s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCBUsd52a3s and "GOTO 2015 • Agile is Dead • Pragmatic Dave Thomas" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M
azeirah 10y ago
By far my favorite talk is and has been for a very long time Bret Victor's inventing on principle, for me, nothing comes close, except for some of his other work I suppose. https://vimeo.com/36579366 https://vimeo.com/36579366
- acchow 10y ago
  Agreed. Was gonna post this if it wasn't up already. After this, The Birth and Death of Javascript: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death... He could've taken the concept further tho. I think there are real hardware simplifications you could do if the OS is a jitting VM - no memory mapping unit and take out the expensive fully-associative TLBs.
  - josh_carterPDX 10y ago
    This is great. I love that he goes into the future. :)
  - caub 10y ago
    this is quite outdated
    - elliotec 10y ago
      but it's from 2035...
  - SonOfLilit 10y ago
    I always have trouble when telling people in person to go watch this - how should I pronounce the "J" in Javascript? * SPOILER ALERT, and seriously go watch it first * If I pronounce "J" I do him an unjustice, and if I pronounce "Y" I ruin a great surprise that comes quite a few minutes into the talk.
    - natdempk 10y ago
      I always go with the "J" pronunciation. It maintains the expectation that the talk makes a joke out of by breaking. I would rather give everyone that first time experience of hearing the "Y" pronunciation than do Gary an injustice.
okket 10y ago
Linus Torvalds talk about git https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8
- c0achmcguirk 10y ago
  Was going to post the same one. Great talk!
miiiiiike 10y ago
Chuck Rossi - How Facebook releases software: https://vimeo.com/56362484 https://vimeo.com/56362484 I remember thinking "Dr. Cox as release manager."
vvanders 10y ago
Herb Sutter, Modern C++ - https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/2-661 https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2014/2-661 Great overview of value types, performance and how hardware that runs things still matters.
oleksiyp 10y ago
Google I/O 2009 - The Myth of the Genius Programmer One of the best talks about code reviews and similiar things https://youtu.be/0SARbwvhupQ https://youtu.be/0SARbwvhupQ
pdkl95 10y ago
Y Not - Adventures in Functional Programming by Jim Weirich https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FITJMJjASUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FITJMJjASUs The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing by Cory Doctorow http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html Cybersecurity as Realpolitik by Dan Geer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt
- HCIdivision17 10y ago
  I'll second "Y Not" by Jim Weirich. It's just such a charming talk. My programming teacher in high school was like that, and I think it's such an excellent way to teach. From the careful way he meanders to the solution to the fact it was a live coding session really grounds the explanation of how the Y combinator works.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    To Dissect a Mockingbird is even better, though...
utefan001 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoDSv5KpEJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoDSv5KpEJk InfoSec talk. Best lines from talk.. "Basic lessons are not learned such as know thy network" "You have to learn your network, you have to have skin in the game" "Defense is hard, breaking stuff is easy" "If you serve the God's of compliance you will fail" "Compliance is not security" "Perfect solution fallacy" "People are falling over themselves not to change, shooting great ideas down." "Perfect attacker fallacy, they don't exist, they are a myth!" "Attackers are not that good because they don't need to be that good." Speaker is Eric Conrad
tboyd47 10y ago
"Being Awesome By Being Boring" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iheymi5QFEY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iheymi5QFEY
simscitizen 10y ago
"An Introduction to SQLite" by Richard Hipp (who wrote the library) is actually a pretty good intro on to how to build your own DB engine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giAMt8Tj-84 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giAMt8Tj-84
- algold 10y ago
  Really good talk! This is a newer and also really good talk about programming languages and their future: "Uncle" Bob Martin - "The Future of Programming" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecIWPzGEbFc
corysama 10y ago
Alan Kay is my favorite tech curmudgeon. 1) Alan Kay: Is it really "Complex"? Or did we just make it "Complicated" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY Take note that he is not giving the talk using Window & PowerPoint, or even Linux & OpenOffice. 100% of the software on his laptop are original products of his group. Including the productivity suite, the OS, the compilers and the languages being compiled. 2) Bret Victor: The Future of Programming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGMiCo2Ntsc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGMiCo2Ntsc
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Note that Alan Kay's talk is freely (?) downloadable at https://vimeo.com/82301919 https://vimeo.com/82301919 (linked in the YouTube video)
michaelmcmillan 10y ago
Fast test, slow test by Gary Bernhardt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAxiiRPHS9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAxiiRPHS9k
dcre 10y ago
I already see a bunch of people posting and upvoting Bret Victor's "Inventing on Principle", but I think his "Media for Thinking the Unthinkable" is better. https://vimeo.com/67076984 https://vimeo.com/67076984
teamhappy 10y ago
Keith Winstein presenting mosh at USENIX 2012 is easily the most entertaining tech talk I've ever seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsIxNYl0oyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsIxNYl0oyU Scott Meyers' talks are fun to watch too.
sssilver 10y ago
Raymond Hettinger's talk about good code reviews -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-BqAjZb8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-BqAjZb8M Carmack's talk about functional programming and Haskell -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PhArSujR_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PhArSujR_A Jack Diederich's "Stop Writing Classes" -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9pEzgHorH0 All with a good sense of humor.
- mixmastamyk 10y ago
  Yes, RH's Beyond PEP8 is great, even if you don't do Python. Will put the others in my queue. I'm reminded of Crockford's "Good Parts" of Javascript, I believe where he introduced me to the "Mother of all Demos."
  - johnhenry 10y ago
    Everything I've seen by Crockford is great!
- someone7x 10y ago
  Came here to add "Stop Writing Classes", a fantastic talk to show how to refactor away from dogmatic OOP.
amelius 10y ago
Rupert Sheldrake, "The Extended Mind, Experimental Evidence", Google Talks 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hic18Xyk9is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hic18Xyk9is If you are in for something out of the ordinary.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Linus Torvalds on Git. It's funny, and it really does tell you a lot about why Git is the way it is. Bryan Cantrill's 2011(?) Lightning talk on ta(1). It's fascinating, but it also shows you just long-lived software can be. Randall Munroe's Talk on the JoCo cruise. Because it's effing hilarious, and teaches everybody the important art of building a ball pit inside your house. Finally, an honorable mention to three papers that don't qualify, but which I think you should read anyway. Reflections on Trusting Trust: This is required reading for... Everybody. It describes a particularly insidious hack, and discusses its ramifications for security. In the Beginning Was The Command Line: If you want get into interface design, programming, or ever work with computers, this is required. It's a snapshot of the 90's, a discussion of operating systems, corporations, and society as we know it. But more importantly, it's a crash course in abstractions. Before you can contribute to the infinite stack of turtles we programmers work with, you should probably understand why it's there, and what it is. Finally, The Lambda Papers. If you've ever wondered how abstractions work, and how they're modeled... This won't really tell you, not totally, but they'll give you something cool to think about, and give you the start of an answer.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  > "Finally, an honorable mention to three papers that don't qualify, but which I think you should read anyway." If we're going for papers, then I'm guessing books are allowed too. If so, for anyone interested in giving themselves a grounding in the fundamentals, it's worth checking out Code by Charles Petzold. I've been going through it, it's excellently written, and has helped me fill in gaps in my understanding of how computers work. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Software/dp/0735611319 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Sof...
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    SICP, Land of Lisp, Exploding the Phone, and The Cuckoo's Egg, while I haven't finished all of them, were all instrumental in making me who I am today.
myth_buster 10y ago
Richard Hamming's You and your research. https://youtu.be/a1zDuOPkMSw https://youtu.be/a1zDuOPkMSw
jjp 10y ago
Hans Rosling's original Ted talk, which has so much passion about data visualisation and making information accessible - http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_y...
hackaflocka 10y ago
Paul Buchheit - Startup School Europe 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5w-0H-hq6E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5w-0H-hq6E Anjana Vakil: Learning Functional Programming with JavaScript - JSUnconf 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-5obm1G_FY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-5obm1G_FY Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle https://vimeo.com/36579366 https://vimeo.com/36579366 Philip Roberts: What the heck is the event loop anyway? | JSConf EU 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aGhZQkoFbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aGhZQkoFbQ
- mattste 10y ago
  I definitely recommend Philip Roberts's talk. I watched it a couple of months into learning Javascript and then everything "clicked."
glitcher 10y ago
One in particular comes to mind that really changed the way I think about the larger problem of security in computer science and what a mess our current state of affairs seems to be in: "The Science of Insecurity" by Meredith L. Patterson and Sergey Gordeychik (2011) https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4763-en-the_science_of_insecurity#video&t=2274 https://media.ccc.de/v/28c3-4763-en-the_science_of_insecurit... Warning: speaker likes to use profanity (which I enjoy :) but possibly NSFW if you're not on headphones
drizze 10y ago
David Beazley's, "Discovering Python": https://youtu.be/RZ4Sn-Y7AP8 https://youtu.be/RZ4Sn-Y7AP8 A fascinating tale about using python during the discovery phase of a trial. Very fun watch. Anything by David Beazley is great!
c0l0 10y ago
Artur Bergman, creator of the Fastly CDN, at Velocity 2011 - giving a (very) short talk about SSDs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7PJ1oeEyGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7PJ1oeEyGg
unkoman 10y ago
Eric Brandwine at AWS talking about how they solved the networking part of the cloud: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qln2u1Vr2E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qln2u1Vr2E
kornish 10y ago
Right now it's Boundaries, by Gary Bernhardt. He details the importance of separating out pure business logic from the plumbing code that brings it input and directs its output ("functional core, imperative shell"). https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/boundaries https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/boundaries
- felixbr 10y ago
  I think Gary was way ahead of the industry when he did this talk in 2012. Today it's common to look at Erlang, Haskell and other good but previously unpopular languages and retrofit their ideas to your language of choice (or build something like Elixir/Kotlin/Swift). But back then Ruby/Python/Java/etc devs would usually not look at anything else because functional programming was only something you might have heard in university and OOP was clearly the only way to build practical software. For me this talk was especially great as he only explains the problems, possible solutions and their trade-offs and leaves the (clear?) conclusion to the audience instead of shoving "you should really use X because it's awesome" down their throat.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > I think Gary was way ahead of the industry when he did this talk in 2012. Today it's common to look at Erlang, Haskell and other good but previously unpopular languages and retrofit their ideas to your language of choice (or build something like Elixir/Kotlin/Swift). But back then Ruby/Python/Java/etc devs would usually not look at anything else because functional programming was only something you might have heard in university and OOP was clearly the only way to build practical software. Ruby and Python were incorporating things from FP long before 2012; the idea that Ruby and Python were pure-OOP and not following inspiration from languages with other primary paradigms before that is simply historically inaccurate, Ruby and Python were never dominated by OOP-is-the-one-true-way philosophy.
    - felixbr 10y ago
      I'm not talking about superficial syntax like map/filter for collections. The notion of keeping the majority of your code side-effect-free with immutability, built-in concurrency and message-passing as idiomatic parts of the language/ecosystem is to this day uncommon and partially impossible in Python/Ruby. http://blog.jenkster.com/2015/12/what-is-functional-programming.html http://blog.jenkster.com/2015/12/what-is-functional-programm...
_rdbw 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNliOm9NtCM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNliOm9NtCM How Google backs up the internet. At the time it changed how I thought about backups/reliability.
longboardcat 10y ago
Wat: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat
jpetitto 10y ago
Deconstructing Functional Programming by Gilad Bracha: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/functional-pros-cons https://www.infoq.com/presentations/functional-pros-cons
- hans 10y ago
  this is always a top one for me, he presents so well and kind of nails down the concepts. but even more so, he sounds like the architect in the matrix having dialogue with some critics.
kethinov 10y ago
My current favorite is Jake Archibald's offline-first progressive web apps talk at Google I/O 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmGr0RszHc8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmGr0RszHc8 It's a terrific window into the future of web application development.
- tkel 10y ago
  Very entertaining, thanks!
- avel 10y ago
  Every talk from Jake Archibald is insightful and entertaining. His talks about offline caching were hilarious.
sunils34 10y ago
Resilience in Complex Adaptive systems by Richard Cook at Velocity Conf 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60
JoshTriplett 10y ago
For reasons completely unrelated to the content, Identity 2.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrpajcAgR1E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrpajcAgR1E Watching that talk brought me over to the "a picture or a few words per slide" style of presentation, rather than the "wall of bullet points" style. It also helped me move from "stop talking, change slides, start talking again", to smooth transitions while talking.
- rhblake 10y ago
  I'm waiting for more people to discover the next level - the "no slides at all" style of presentation. Cory Doctorow did a nice keynote at 28C3 completely without slides, and it worked very well ("The coming war on general computation", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYqkU1y0AYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYqkU1y0AYc). Not suitable for every type of talk, of course, but certainly there are many where the slides are a useless crutch or slides-for-the-sake-of-slides. If you're a good enough speaker you can hold people's attention without pointing at large words behind you. (See Edward Tufte's "The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint" for good arguments about why slides are a bad idea most of the time)
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    http://www.noslidesconf.net/ http://www.noslidesconf.net/ Quite feasible for a good keynote. Harder for a technical talk, since a good diagram can greatly improve an explanation.
samcal 10y ago
James Mickens at Monitorama: https://vimeo.com/95066828 https://vimeo.com/95066828 Aside from the comedic aspect (which makes the talk incredible), Mickens is a genuinely brilliant thinker and has a marvelous way with words.
peterkelly 10y ago
"The Last Lecture", by Randy Pausch. While it's by a well-known CS professor (who was dying of cancer at the time), it's not a technical talk, but about life and work, and how to make the most of it. One of the most inspiring things I've ever seen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo Another fantastic one is Steve Jobs' 2005 commencement address at Stanford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc
- qznc 10y ago
  The talks are awesome. I still downvoted this, because I consider it off topic. Sorry.
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat
  - sjnair96 10y ago
    And I upvoted you for explaining why you downvoted it. No point downvoting you. Comparing the end results of both, we only have a higher chance of a net benefit by upvoting you, regardless of whether I agree with you or not. I hope the rest of the HN community also takes this approach before voting.
- will_pseudonym 10y ago
  Randy Pausch's Time Management lecture is also great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tim1sjY7q8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tim1sjY7q8
  - acangiano 10y ago
    Actual lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0
    - 10y ago
madmax108 10y ago
I see a couple of Bret Victor videos here, but the one I loved the most was "The Future of Programming": https://vimeo.com/71278954 https://vimeo.com/71278954 Really set me on a path of re-examining older ideas (and research papers), for applications that are much more contemporary. Absolute stunner of a talk (and the whole 70's gag was really great). "What would be really sad is if in 40 years we were still writing code in procedures in text files" :(
- CarlsJrMints 10y ago
  I really liked the message of each generation of programming considers the next "not real programming". It makes me reconsider the pushback against node-esque micro-packages: http://www.haneycodes.net/npm-left-pad-have-we-forgotten-how-to-program/ http://www.haneycodes.net/npm-left-pad-have-we-forgotten-how.... Maybe this is just the next logical evolution of programming.
- AKrumbach 10y ago
  Came here to give the same answer. Between "Future of Programming" and the Mother of All Demos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY) I find it mindbogglingly depressing that it feels so much like the entire programming field has stagnated for the last 40+ years, re-implementing the same [flawed? limiting? incorrect?] ideas over and over.
deleted 10y ago
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kruhft 10y ago
Growing a Language by Guy Steele (video and transcription): http://dropclickpaste.com/#7d1673d81ee5a0bb7994e80a4f394997c5729cf6 http://dropclickpaste.com/#7d1673d81ee5a0bb7994e80a4f394997c...
- kruhft 10y ago
  New, working link for above: http://dropclickpaste.com/#CYBgRgjA7AzAHANjMOwDGBODYCmYM4ICsaJAZjsEkUXDgExxEwZRA http://dropclickpaste.com/#CYBgRgjA7AzAHANjMOwDGBODYCmYM4ICs...
bluefox 10y ago
Dynamic Languages Wizards Series - Panel on Runtime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LG-RtcSYUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LG-RtcSYUQ
deleted 10y ago
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beyondcompute 10y ago
Bret Victor is pretty interesting though a bit philosophical. The best practical talk is of course this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asLUTiJJqdE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asLUTiJJqdE - Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin, Clean Architecture and Design
superplussed 10y ago
React-motion, the react animation package that boils all of the animations down to one concept, a spring. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tavDv5hXpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tavDv5hXpo
cgag 10y ago
Simple made easy is my favorite but I'd also just generally recommend everything by Rich Hickey, Gary Bernhardt, and Jonathan Blow.
- slantedview 10y ago
  Agree. I've watched a ton of talks over the years on a variety of topics/technologies, and Simple made Easy just feels like a classic, and is timelessly relevant.
Malic 10y ago
grin Here we go... For "laughing at ourselves" and oddities of computer languages, there is "Wat" by Gary Bernhardt: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat For an opinion on the Sun to Oracle transition, there is "Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of illumos" by Bryan M. Cantrill, Joyent. His Larry Ellison rant makes me smile: https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m00s https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m00s
- deleted 10y ago
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- evan121 10y ago
  Here's a great "wat" talk for Angular: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_Wp-2XA9ZU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_Wp-2XA9ZU
- qaq 10y ago
  "His Larry Ellison rant makes me smile" +1 great talk
- avodonosov 10y ago
  It's like a tech talk combined with a stand-up comedy, two-in-one.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    That's Bryan's talks in a nutshell. And it is glorious. Standout moments from his talks: -"The Lawnmower" -"Nazis in Oracle Allegory" -"AWK" -"Architectural Review Board (Keep your compiler people in little boxes)" -"madvise MADV_DONTNEED writes lazily to disk?" -"A piece of on-the-fly software engineering (or: you're f*ked)" Also, from Brendan Gregg's lighning talk in 2013: -"SO LET's JUST CUT THEM OFF!" -"Their reporting software also couldn't handle decimal points"
    - robert_foss 10y ago
      Do you have any links?
cconroy 10y ago
Doing with Images Makes Symbols, Alan Kay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2LZLYcu_JY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2LZLYcu_JY The title says it all. It's really a summary of several software systems with good ideas abound. I believe all the software is 80s or prior. Edit: I also forgot to mention some psychology and math.
intelekshual 10y ago
How to Design A Good API and Why it Matters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw Related slides: http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/32713.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...
dragonbonheur 10y ago
The mother of all demos by Douglas Engelbart https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY How I met your girlfriend: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5xRRF5GfQs&t=66s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5xRRF5GfQs&t=66s
- rdegges 10y ago
  I had the pleasure of working with Samy back at Fonality (my first job!) He's such a cool, smart, and just all around amazing dude. Anything he does is always fun, interesting, and hacker-ish.
grose 10y ago
Lexical Scanning in Go by Rob Pike https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxaD_trXwRE I love everything about this talk. It walks you through building a lexer from scratch in a simple and elegant way, through a very interesting use of coroutines. I appreciate the bits of humor in the talk as well.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Rob Pike is far more pleasant than his acolytes (for lack of a better word). Pike makes me want to clap: cat-v makes me want to vomit. It's the DJB people with none of the charm.
- nicklaf 10y ago
  +1 for mentioning the work of Michael Jackson in the beginning. I have to watch this one again.
RodericDay 10y ago
I really liked "The Life and Death of Javascript" by Gary Bernhardt
daveguy 10y ago
Geoffrey Hinton "The Next Generation of Neural Networks". A google tech talk from 2007 about this newfangled "deep neural network" thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyzOUbkUf3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyzOUbkUf3M
anoother 10y ago
"How to Speed up a Python Program 114,000 times." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e08kOj2kISU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e08kOj2kISU Humour, serious technical insight and a good reminder of why being a generalist is an advantage.
philbo 10y ago
Joshua Bloch: How to design a good API and why it matters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw
nickysielicki 10y ago
DEFCON 20: Owning Bad Guys {And Mafia} With Javascript Botnets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QT4YJn7oVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QT4YJn7oVI This guy is just too funny.
pradeepchhetri 10y ago
One of my favourite talks is by James Mickens at Monitorama 2015: https://vimeo.com/95066828 https://vimeo.com/95066828
- mikeevans 10y ago
  Another great one by James - "Not Even Close: The State of Computer Security": https://vimeo.com/135347162 https://vimeo.com/135347162
- wrigby 10y ago
  I was going to post this one as well - it's my all time favorite. He does a great job of making truly funny, yet incredibly intelligent jokes.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- soobrosa 10y ago
  My humble James Mickens Shrine a.k.a. the only _real_ combined CS degree and MBA you will ever need https://medium.com/@soobrosa/my-humble-james-mickens-shrine-a-k-a-the-only-real-combined-cs-degree-and-mba-you-will-ever-need-1f437f496d1c#.q4oz0aae3 https://medium.com/@soobrosa/my-humble-james-mickens-shrine-...
cvwright 10y ago
Gary McGraw: Cyber War, Cyber Peace, Stones, and Glass Houses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCULzMa7iqs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCULzMa7iqs I like how this talk cuts through a lot of the BS in security. One of his points is that the US and other rich Western countries have a lot more to lose from a possible "cyber war" than our potential adversaries do. Another key point is that we'll never make much progress unless we can somehow start building better systems in the first place, with fewer vulnerabilities for an adversary to exploit. I think the second point has become a lot more widely accepted in recent years since McGraw started giving this talk. Unfortunately it sounds like a lot of government folks still haven't got the memo on point #1.
andycroll 10y ago
Slightly self-serving as the organiser but Sarah Mei's talk at Brighton Ruby this year was terrific. http://brightonruby.com/2016/how-we-make-software-a-new-theory-of-teams-sarah-mei/ http://brightonruby.com/2016/how-we-make-software-a-new-theo...
geichel 10y ago
Zed Shaw's presentation, it's Not You, It's Them: Why Programming Languages Are Hard To Teach -- https://vimeo.com/53062800 https://vimeo.com/53062800
samblr 10y ago
There is a sort of palpable energy in (Ryan Dahl) node.js original presentation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztspvPYybIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztspvPYybIY edit: +Ryan Dahl
ajankovic 10y ago
I like this one because it's a good reality check: Opening Keynote: Greg Young - Stop Over-Engenering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRr4xeMn1uU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRr4xeMn1uU
EvanAnderson 10y ago
I very much enjoyed the talk John Graham-Cumming gave "The Great Railway Caper: Big Data in 1955": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcBJfkE5UwU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcBJfkE5UwU Any of Jason Scott's talks given at various hacker cons are usually historically informative and always a lot of laughs (but they're decidedly not "technical").
IntelMiner 10y ago
Not quite as low-level as some of the other talks, but I love watching LazyGameReviews "Tech Tales" series when ever a new one comes out It's fairly high level, but he really burrows into computer history and it's simply fascinating to watch, helped by the fact the person is extremely passionate about what he does https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB1vrRFJI1Q&list=PLbBZM9aUMsjEVZPCDMl-lXOx50rSBNFQC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB1vrRFJI1Q&list=PLbBZM9aUMs...
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  On that note you may also like Techmoan - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN2yCnHTG_6qxmv_pdBxWxCPsbA1Cl2RI https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLN2yCnHTG_6qxmv_pdBxW..., The 8 Bit Guy - https://www.youtube.com/user/adric22 https://www.youtube.com/user/adric22 and Gaming Historian - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnbvPS_rXp4PC21PG2k1UVg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnbvPS_rXp4PC21PG2k1UVg
  - IntelMiner 10y ago
    I love 8-bit guy and Gaming Historian, I'm gonna plunge into Techmoan though!
akkartik 10y ago
Moxie Marlinspike at Blackhat 2010 on how we lost the war for privacy in spite of winning the Crypto Wars of the 1990's-early 2000's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unZZCykRa5w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unZZCykRa5w
agentultra 10y ago
We Really Don't Know How To Compute! [0] is probably my top... next to the christmas tree lectures. [0] https://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-To-Compute https://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-...
ruairidhwm 10y ago
Hacking with Words and Smiles by James Lyne https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrNo0XpQxBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrNo0XpQxBk He was a co-speaker at TEDxGlasgow with me and I thought his talk was brilliant. Cyber-crime is a really interesting area.
sedachv 10y ago
QueueTard's Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips at HOPE number nine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 Guy Steele's How to Think about Parallel Programming: Not! at Strange Loop 2011: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Thinking-Parallel-Programming https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Thinking-Parallel-Progra...
ericssmith 10y ago
Not at all high-brow, but I revisit the in-the-trenches case study of "Scaling Pinterest" on Infoq from time to time because I find their fighting through the pain inspirational for my own scaling troubles. https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Pinterest https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Pinterest
agconti 10y ago
Mike Bostock's talk on visualizing algorithms is one of my favorites: https://vimeo.com/112319901 https://vimeo.com/112319901 > Visualizing Algorithms – A look at the use of visualization and animation to understand, explain and debug algorithms.
indexerror 10y ago
My favourite talk is: "What the heck is the event loop anyway?" by Philip Roberts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aGhZQkoFbQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aGhZQkoFbQ
nommm-nommm 10y ago
Elevator hacking (seriously) https://youtu.be/oHf1vD5_b5I https://youtu.be/oHf1vD5_b5I
exarne 10y ago
It's an old talk but I really enjoyed it at the time, Paul Graham on Great Hackers: http://web.archive.org/web/20130729231533id_/http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail188.html http://web.archive.org/web/20130729231533id_/http://itc.conv...
makmanalp 10y ago
Aside from a lot of the classics here, one that stands out is this AMAZING live demo at pycon by David Beazley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCs5OvhV9S4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCs5OvhV9S4 The simple and followable progression to more and more complex ideas blows my mind every time.
rdtsc 10y ago
Pretty much anything by David Beazley or Bryan Cantrill Discovering Python (David Beazley) http://pyvideo.org/pycon-us-2014/discovering-python.html http://pyvideo.org/pycon-us-2014/discovering-python.html David finds himself in a dark vault, stuck for months sifting through deliberately obfuscated pile of old code and manuals. All seems lost, but then he finds Python on a vanilla Windows box. Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of Illumos (Bryan Cantrill) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc History of Illumos, SunOS, Solaris, the horribleness of Oracle These are not technical, but they are entertaining.
- ra7 10y ago
  I'd also add Raymond Hettinger's talks on Python with my favorite one being this famous one: Beyond PEP 8 - Best practices for beautiful intelligible code https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-BqAjZb8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-BqAjZb8M
- wyldfire 10y ago
  I'm glad you brought that dabeaz talk up, I really enjoyed that one myself.
tehwebguy 10y ago
That guy fat from the Bootstrap team - What Is Open Source & Why Do I Feel So Guilty? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIDb6VBO9os https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIDb6VBO9os
danpalmer 10y ago
I find Simon Peyton Jones to be an excellent educator. He talks mostly about Haskell and the GHC compiler, but his talks are very accessible to a wide audience of programmers.
vinkelhake 10y ago
"Desktop on the Linux" by Wolfgang Draxinger (guest appearance by Lennart Poettering): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTdUmlGxVo0
archagon 10y ago
I don't really have a favorite, but recently I really enjoyed "8 Bit & '8 Bitish' Graphics-Outside the Box"[1]. The name didn't catch my eye, but then I learned that it was a lecture by the very same Mark Ferrari who made these[2] unbelievably beautiful color-cycling pixel art animations. Master of his art — definitely worth listening to! [1]: http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023586/8-Bit-8-Bitish-Graphics http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023586/8-Bit-8-Bitish-Graphics [2]: http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/ http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/
jordanlev 10y ago
As a web developer, my favorite recent talk is "Modern Layouts: Getting Out of Our Ruts" by Jen Simmons https://aneventapart.com/news/post/modern-layouts-getting-out-of-our-ruts-by-jen-simmons-an-event-apart-video https://aneventapart.com/news/post/modern-layouts-getting-ou... ...very inspiring if you're bored with the way websites have been looking for the past few years.
djfdev 10y ago
I always enjoyed Ryan Dahl's casual at-home talk on the history of Node.JS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAc0vQCC6UQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAc0vQCC6UQ
augustk 10y ago
Edsger Dijkstra's Turing Award Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sIlKP2LzbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sIlKP2LzbA
runT1ME 10y ago
Propositions as Types: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOiZatlZtGU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOiZatlZtGU I think this can really really change how we look at everyday programming tasks everywhere from the type of tooling we choose to how we approach problems.
Philipp__ 10y ago
Everything by Mr. Bryan Cantrill! This one is special: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6XQUciI-Sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6XQUciI-Sc
bajsejohannes 10y ago
Jon Blow's "How to program independent games": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjDsP5n2kSM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjDsP5n2kSM It's about much more than games. To me, it's about identifying and not doing unnecessary work. The second half of this video is a Q&A session, which I would skip.
x0x0 10y ago
Cliff Click was the jvm architect at sun then spent a decade at azul systems as their jvm architect. The talk is "A JVM Does That?" It's well worth watching if you are interested in vms at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL2D3qzHtqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL2D3qzHtqY
pacomerh 10y ago
Rich Hickey "Simple Made Easy" https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy
- vram22 10y ago
  His "Hammock Driven Development" talk is good too: http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2016/03/tech-video-rich-hickey-hammock-driven.html http://jugad2.blogspot.in/2016/03/tech-video-rich-hickey-ham... A couple of comments there by me.
- muhic 10y ago
  +1 for Hickey's talks. The Changelog compiled a selection of the best: https://changelog.com/rich-hickeys-greatest-hits/ https://changelog.com/rich-hickeys-greatest-hits/
lukewrites 10y ago
Mine is "The Internet With A Human Face", by Maciej Cegłowski http://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm http://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm It's what I direct non-technical people to when they ask what the big deal about internet privacy is.
dorianm 10y ago
Aaron Patterson talks (aka @tenderlove): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3gYklsN9uc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3gYklsN9uc
mwcampbell 10y ago
A few of Bryan Cantrill's talks have already been mentioned here, but this one about DTrace, from 2007, is a gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgmA48fILq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgmA48fILq8 I especially like the part in the middle where he tells the story of how a an awful GNOME applet was killing a Sun Ray server, and how he tracked down the culprit with DTrace.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I missed this one. I should go watch it. Anything that bashes on GNOME is fine with me.
sideb0ard 10y ago
I love the Ted Nelson "Computers For Cynics" series - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdnGPQaICjk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdnGPQaICjk He is kinda awesome in Herzog's recent 'Lo and Behold' too.
rhgraysonii 10y ago
Closure, by @steveklabnik https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaWHVceDbFo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaWHVceDbFo So many lessons in short, beautiful piece.
taeric 10y ago
https://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-To-Compute https://www.infoq.com/presentations/We-Really-Dont-Know-How-... is by far my favorite technical talk right now. Sussman goes over some interesting ideas on the provenance of calculations and asserts that "exact" computation is possibly not worth the cost.
monksy 10y ago
Agile Is Dead: By Dave Thomas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BOSpxYJ9M I love his talks for a few reasons: Often times... 1. He's anti-hype 2. He's contriversal 3. He's right.
peoplee 10y ago
The Pixel Factory by Steven Wittens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NkjLWAkYZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NkjLWAkYZ8 For those how likes computer graphics (or want to learn), this is a gold piece.
1057x31337 10y ago
Therapeutic Refactoring by Katrina Owen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4dlF0kcThQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4dlF0kcThQ
lukego 10y ago
Dynamic Languages Wizards panels. http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dynlangs/wizards-panels.html http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dynlangs/wizards-panels.html
Boogiepop 10y ago
Amateurs. https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1311_05-08_mickens.pdf
VLM 10y ago
Aside from the typical, I watched Damian Conway "Standing on the shoulders of giants" from YAPC 2016 last week and found it interesting. Always fun to see a modern feature full language collide with history and algorithms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq2HkAYbG5o&index=2&list=PLA9_Hq3zhoFykB5TDa4OjI6uoTg9OtABT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq2HkAYbG5o&index=2&list=PLA...
- tiedmann 10y ago
  for lang { when Perl { say "Not interested" } }
jack9 10y ago
What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It’s True https://vimeo.com/9270320 https://vimeo.com/9270320
shahar2k 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1C9DyIi_8 "the greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function" not a high tech talk, or particularly technically complex, but it shows a common blindspot in a way that is both clear, enlightening and frightening.
mrob 10y ago
CppCon 2014: Mike Acton "Data-Oriented Design and C++" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc Detailed discussion of how to get the most out of your memory cache and memory bandwidth, focusing on games development. It's full of examples of how understanding both the problem and the hardware, and working in a straightforward way, can give you huge performance gains over using poorly suited abstractions. It shows how low level thinking is still important even with modern compilers. I recommend people interested in performance optimization watch it.
antouank 10y ago
Rich Hickey - Simplicity Matters https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI8tNMsozo0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI8tNMsozo0
petr_tik 10y ago
1 Martin Thompson busting myths about hardware and explaining why it's important to know. Mechanical sympathy makes you better, because you know how the code actually runs on the machine and interacts with different layers of memory https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC1EKLQ2Wmg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC1EKLQ2Wmg 2 Matt Godbolt (the man behind GCC explorer) - Emulating a 6502 system in Javascript Great talk about BBC micro and much more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WuRq-Wmw5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WuRq-Wmw5o 3 Matt Adereth - Clojure/typing History of keyboards and a custom keyboard written in Clojure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk3A41U0iO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uk3A41U0iO4 I like the 3 for their content and how each speaker presented the background and their project/hack/ideas. Highly recommend
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  Your second link reminded me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLv_INgaLq8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLv_INgaLq8 (which definitely builds on some of Matt's work). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBkNBP00wJE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBkNBP00wJE - C++17 for the Commodore 64. Probable language warnings for my other suggestions: * Rescuing Prince of Persia from the Sands of Time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnEWBtCnFs8 (was this talk ever given elsewhere?) * And You Shall Know Me By My Trail of Documentation - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEgHdHdUDaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEgHdHdUDaA * The History and Evolution of Computer Viruses - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2g9lgYrYJM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2g9lgYrYJM
rimantas 10y ago
Anything by Sandi Metz.
romper 10y ago
Secret history of silicon valley: https://youtu.be/hFSPHfZQpIQ https://youtu.be/hFSPHfZQpIQ
romper 10y ago
Secret history of silicon valley: https://youtu.be/hFSPHfZQpIQ https://youtu.be/hFSPHfZQpIQ
andrey_utkin 10y ago
Linus on Nvidia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpOyKCNZYw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpOyKCNZYw
jboynyc 10y ago
I like all of Carin Meier's talks, but I think the one that made the most lasting impression was "The Joy of Flying Robots with Clojure." http://gigasquidsoftware.com/speaking/ http://gigasquidsoftware.com/speaking/
ciroduran 10y ago
I love Kevlin Henney's talks, he's very entertaining and informative at the same time, here's one called "Seven Ineffective Coding Habits of Many Java Programmers", very useful even if you don't use Java - https://vimeo.com/101084305 https://vimeo.com/101084305 The rest of his channel is full of his talks https://vimeo.com/channels/761265 https://vimeo.com/channels/761265
fitzwatermellow 10y ago
Well. There's enough quality content in this thread to start a dedicated cable television channel, a la Viceland ;) Not sure if it's my favorite. And the subject is more technology than "tech". But the talk that keeps haunting me is Michael Dearing's lecture from the Reid Hoffman "Blitzscaling" class at Stanford: Heroes of Capitalism From Beyond The Grave https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vCdfa_aeI8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vCdfa_aeI8 Dearing draws upon an obscure letter by Daniel McCallum, superintendant of the New York and Erie Railroad, written to his bosses in the 1850s. In the report, McCallum bemoans the stress and frustration of operating a railroad system spanning thousands of miles. All of the joy and magic he used to revel in whilst running a fifty mile stretch back in his home town has long since dissipated. Furthermore, the unit cost per mile seems to be exploding rather counter-intuitively! Dearing goes on to elucidate the absolute necessity of the railroads ("the thing to know about the railroads is: they were startups once") themselves. As guarantors of civilization and progress. Beacons bringing light and reason to the dark swamps of ignorance and inhumanity. And not just in the physical transport of goods, people and ideas across the continent. But as the wealth created from that creative destruction remains the best cure for all of our other inimical maladies: poverty, injustice, disease and stagnation. So, no pressure. But civilization depends upon you! Links to References in the Talk: Estimates of World GDP: From One Million BC to the Present http://delong.typepad.com/print/20061012_LRWGDP.pdf http://delong.typepad.com/print/20061012_LRWGDP.pdf The Process of Creative Destruction by Joseph Schumpeter http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CreativeDestruction.html http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/CreativeDestruction.html The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674940529 http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674940529 Report of D. C. McCallum to the stockholders of the New York and Erie Railroad https://books.google.com/books?id=4Gc9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA33#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=4Gc9AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA33#v=one... Things As They Are In America by William Chambers https://archive.org/details/thingsastheyare04chamgoog https://archive.org/details/thingsastheyare04chamgoog
raspasov 10y ago
Are we there yet? - Rich Hickey https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-Hickey https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-Hi...
- wedesoft 10y ago
  Of all talks by rich Hickey, this is my favourite.
nicwest 10y ago
The Clean Code Talks - "Global State and Singletons": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FRm3VPhseI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FRm3VPhseI
thegeekpirate 10y ago
Black Hat USA 2015 - The Memory Sinkhole Unleashing An X86 Design Flaw Allowing Universal Privilege https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGuIGLz01hE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGuIGLz01hE
- loc_00000000 10y ago
  It's been a while since I've seen this talk. Hasn't this talk been accused of being bullshit or am I remembering it wrong?
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exawsthrowaway 10y ago
It's not publicly available, but it was an internal AWS talk and very-deep-dive on the design & implementation of S3. A real eye opener for what it meant to build at global scale. It's worth joining a global-scale tech company (AWS, Google, Azure, Facebook) just to have your mind blown by some of the internal materials.
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ebcode 10y ago
John Holland is always worth watching, and not very many people have seen this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_u_d-KLEsE#t=1183.549186 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_u_d-KLEsE#t=1183.549186
lewisl9029 10y ago
The Front-end Architecture Revolution by David Nolen: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/61483785 http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/61483785 It completely changed the way I approach front-end development (Not that talk in particular though. I saw an earlier, similar talk on Youtube but this one has much higher quality).
davur 10y ago
Cal Henderson "Why I Hate Django" DjangoCon 2008 Keynote - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Fr65PFqfk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Fr65PFqfk. Not that it is the most educational talk, but it's really funny (edit: added youtube link).
jacques_chester 10y ago
Stop Building Products by David Edwards. A deeply thoughtful discussion of the impact of metaphors on how we think about software development. Skip to 0:40 if you don't want to hear the MC. http://livestre.am/5qFUn http://livestre.am/5qFUn
ChicagoBoy11 10y ago
Peter Norvig on the "Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvDCzhbjYWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvDCzhbjYWs I think it is so easy for us to discuss the impact of big data and quickly get into the weeds, but I think in this talk Norvig does an especially great job in making you truly appreciate the seismic impact that the availability of massive quantities of data can have on your way to think about problems. This is one of the first things I ever saw of him, and I've been in love ever since.
danblick 10y ago
I think Alan Kay's "Doing with Images makes Symbols" talk from 1987 might make my list: http://www.archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987 http://www.archive.org/details/AlanKeyD1987 It's mostly about the history of HCI up to that point.
Keyframe 10y ago
Too many great talks to mention, but if I had to pick one it would be Ted Nelson's few minutes of demonstration of Xanadu. Demonstration is lacking, but what he said about the concept/idea is what stuck with me. Deep and referential(?) content. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En_2T7KH6RA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En_2T7KH6RA
vonklaus 10y ago
Ashton Kutcher--Startup School I like it because it is the intersection of so many things. He starts slow, is very intimidated by the audience. The audience, obviously super skeptical of the clown from that 70s show giving any useful information, they could learn from. He finds his footing with a great morivational story (albeit laden with a few cliches) about a forgotten entrepreneur and how he built some lasting value. For me, this is a great talk. The story is extremely motivational and has some interesting bits of history & entrepreneurial genius-- but the entire experience is extremely educational. About bias, drive & success. I liked it for what it wasnt.
raglof 10y ago
Bret Victor's "Inventing on Principle" [1] or Rob Pike's "Concurrency Is Not Parallelism" [2]. [1] https://vimeo.com/36579366 https://vimeo.com/36579366 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_DpYBzKso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_DpYBzKso
SonOfLilit 10y ago
"The Birth and Death of Javascript" by Gary Bernhardt (probably the most talented speaker on tech) at https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death... I'd mention Bret Victor's work before (maybe Drawing Dynamic Visualizations?), but Bret cheats by writing a lot of amazing code for each of his talks, and most of the awesome comes from the code, not his (great nonetheless) ability as a speaker. Then you have John Carmack's QuakeCon keynotes, which are just hours and hours of him talking about things that interest him in random order, and it still beats most well prepared talks because of how good he is at what he does. HN will probably like best the one where he talks about his experiments in VR, a bit before he joined Oculus (stuff like when he tried shining a laser into his eyes to project an image, against the recommendations of... well, everyone): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk
johnhenry 10y ago
Douglass Crockford's series of 8 videos, "Crockford on JavaScript" really helped me gain a understanding of the language and a better understanding of programming in general. If you don't like or understand JavaScript, this will definitely change that. He's an excellent speaker and the talks are quite enjoyable. Here is the first video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoB2r1QxIAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoB2r1QxIAY. If you like it, the other 7 are available in the suggested section.
recmend 10y ago
People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it by Simon Sinek https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_insp...
jonbaer 10y ago
Richard Feynman: Fun to Imagine (BBC Series, 1983) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3pYRn5j7oI&list=PL04B3F5636096478C https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3pYRn5j7oI&list=PL04B3F5636...
wyldfire 10y ago
"Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken" [1] http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk [2] http://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf http://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf
krsna 10y ago
"When We Build" by Wilson Miner: https://vimeo.com/34017777 https://vimeo.com/34017777 It completely changed my perspective on how design shapes our world.
dantle 10y ago
Indistinguishable From Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips. Explains a lot of recent mass-market innovations that keep the semiconductor manufacturing industry rolling, and goes into detail about the many tricks used to ensure scaling down to the 22nm node. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4
fivealarm 10y ago
I'm relatively early in my career, and I feel like I've learned a ridiculous amount of useful stuff from talks given by these people: Brandon Rhodes Raymond Hettinger David Beazley Sandi Metz Avdi Grimm
0xmohit 10y ago
I have a list of interesting talks on Haskell/OCaml [0]. (Plan to organize and add more categories.) [0] https://github.com/0xmohit/talks https://github.com/0xmohit/talks
d1ffuz0r 10y ago
Marketing Matters by Jesse Noller https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZ_E1OO_PY&list=WL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZ_E1OO_PY&list=WL
0xmohit 10y ago
How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters [0] The Principles of Clean Architecture [1] The State of the Art in Microservices by Adrian Cockcroft [2] "The Mess We're In" by Joe Armstrong [3] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TH-Y78tt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_TH-Y78tt4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwpxq9-uw_0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwpxq9-uw_0 [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4
- panic 10y ago
  On the subject of API design, this talk is also quite good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ5_u8Lgvyk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ5_u8Lgvyk
- zerognowl 10y ago
  +1 for Joe Armstrong's talk. Very funny, but uncomfortably true
boulos 10y ago
In addition to Linus's git talk, I really enjoyed Jeff Dean's EE380 retrospective on Building Systems at Google (http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=modXC5IWTJI http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=modXC5IWTJI). Many people have mentioned Jeff's basic premise elsewhere ("Design a system for 10x your current need, but not 100x, rewrite it before then") but this talk gave several useful examples where tipping points occurred (at least with Search).
vayarajesh 10y ago
TED talk - Elon musk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgKWPdJWuBQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgKWPdJWuBQ D10 conference - Steve jobs and Bill gates - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw8x7ASpRIY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw8x7ASpRIY TED talk - Bill gates (Innovation to Zero) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaF-fq2Zn7I
simula67 10y ago
"Greg Wilson - What We Actually Know About Software Development, and Why We Believe It’s True" https://vimeo.com/9270320 https://vimeo.com/9270320
jagermo 10y ago
"Pwned by the Owner" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4oB28ksiIo), a DefCon 18 talk about a stolen Mac that one day popped back up on the owners DynDNS service, he was able to connect to it and had some fun afterward. Not a technical deepdive, but entertaining.
jentulman 10y ago
Dan Abromovich sort of introducing Redux in this talk. https://youtu.be/xsSnOQynTHs https://youtu.be/xsSnOQynTHs
unimpressive 10y ago
These aren't necessarily my absolute favorite talks, but they're great mind-altering talks a little off the beaten path so I'd like to highlight them: "Writing A Thumb Drive From Scratch" by Travis Goodspeed - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Im0_KUEf8&nohtml5=False https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Im0_KUEf8&nohtml5=False Excellent talk on the hardware side of security, goes into some really cool theoretical hard disk defense stuff, incredibly insightful and introduces a hardware security tech toy so fun you'll want to go out and order it the moment you're done watching. The speaker is entertaining as all heck to boot. "Programming and Scaling" by Alan Kay - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyIQKBzIuBY&nohtml5=False https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyIQKBzIuBY&nohtml5=False Interesting talk on the theoretical limits of code size and engineering versus tinkering. Also talks a lot about Alan Kay's philosophy of computer science which analogizes systems to biological systems, which are the systems with the largest proven scaling on the planet. "The Mother Of All Demos" by Douglas Engelbart - https://archive.org/details/XD300-23_68HighlightsAResearchCntAugHumanIntellect https://archive.org/details/XD300-23_68HighlightsAResearchCn... This talk is so prescient you won't believe your eyes. Given in 1968, Douglas demonstrates just about every major computing concept in use today on a modern machine, along with some ones that are still experimental or unevenly distributed such as smooth remote desktop and collaborative editing.
joshux 10y ago
Damien Katz - CouchDB and Me: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/katz-couchdb-and-me https://www.infoq.com/presentations/katz-couchdb-and-me The talk is about how Damien quit his job to hack on open source software. It shows his struggle and doubt while embarking on the project and then finally invented CouchDB. It's a passionate and human account of the process of creating something significant. I recommend every hacker watch this.
joeclark77 10y ago
First, the "Mother of all Demos" by Doug Engelbart: https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY https://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY This was in 1968, at a time when most people thought about computers as being machines for solving computation problems, like processing payrolls or calculating rocket trajectories. Engelbart and his students had the radical idea that computers could be used for human "knowledge worker" productivity. In one 90 minute presentation, he introduces everything from the idea of a GUI, to the mouse, to word processing, hypertext, computer graphics, and (simulated) videoconferencing. You have to be able to put yourself in the shoes of the audience that has never seen this stuff before, and it'll blow you away. Something more recent: Martin Fowler's great introduction to NoSQL: https://youtu.be/qI_g07C_Q5I https://youtu.be/qI_g07C_Q5I Not so technical, this is a great overview of the reasons why (and when) NoSQL is valuable. He crams a lot into a short speech, so it's one of the rare videos I've required students in my database classes to watch. Now, really getting away from the technical, I have to recommend watching the IDEO shopping cart video: https://youtu.be/taJOV-YCieI https://youtu.be/taJOV-YCieI This is the classic introduction of Design Thinking to the world, in 1999. If you're using the Lean Startup or an Agile method, but have never heard of IDEO's shopping cart, you may be able to get along fine at work, but you should be kind of embarrassed like a physicist who's never read Newton.
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NetStrikeForce 10y ago
ECCHacks - A gentle introduction to elliptic-curve cryptography [31c3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6jTFxQaUJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6jTFxQaUJA
peelle 10y ago
Clay Shirky on Love, Internet Style. He has several great talks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1TZaElTAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1TZaElTAs
stewartw 10y ago
Lawrence Lessig's 'free culture' from OSCON 2002:- https://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/ https://randomfoo.net/oscon/2002/lessig/ Anything at all by Richard Feynman:- https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22richard+feynman%22&tbm=vid https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22richard+feynman%22&tbm=...
m0llusk 10y ago
Google TechTalks Personal Growth Series: William Dement on Healthy Sleep and Optimal Performance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8
theviajerock 10y ago
My favorite is this one about Drones and IA. One of the best: https://www.ted.com/talks/raffaello_d_andrea_the_astounding_athletic_power_of_quadcopters https://www.ted.com/talks/raffaello_d_andrea_the_astounding_...
zengr 10y ago
My personal favorite is "The ACL is Dead" by Zed Shaw https://vimeo.com/2723800 https://vimeo.com/2723800
zerognowl 10y ago
Always refreshing to hear one of Haroon Meer's talks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rarpym8JJXQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rarpym8JJXQ Jake Appelbaum's Digital Anti-Repression Workshop is de rigeur listening too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoJ9pQ0cn8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHoJ9pQ0cn8
antigremlin 10y ago
Temporally Quaquaversal Virtual Nanomachine is another gem by Damian Conway: https://yow.eventer.com/events/1004/talks/1028 https://yow.eventer.com/events/1004/talks/1028
wedesoft 10y ago
Dr Meister: Using Lisp, LLVM, and C++ for molecular programming: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X69_42Mj-g http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X69_42Mj-g
keane 10y ago
What Makes Us Uniquely Human? by Erwin McManus: http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/What-Makes-Us-Uniquely-Human-Er http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/What-Makes-Us-Uniquely-Human-...
adrianbordinc 10y ago
One of my favorites. dhh showing once again his ruthless pragmatism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlhAkNWC1qo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlhAkNWC1qo

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

Oh god yes. And from the Manta talk, to paraphrase: I believe that if you talk about Oracle without going into Nazi allegory, than some understanding has been left on the table. In fact, I firmly believe that if you were talking to someone who hadn't heard of WWII but was an Oracle customer, that you would explain the Nazis to them in Oracle allegory: Wow. Really? Yes, it's true: Larry Ellison owned a whole country Oh god! The humanity! Just imagine the licences on that thing I know, it was terrible dude, just ask Poland Also, for another excellent talk by Bernhardt, this time about the differences in philosophy between Python and Ruby, which gives a very fair critique of them both: https://vimeo.com/9471538 https://vimeo.com/9471538.

smoldyr86 10y ago
I worked for Oracle Social as a software engineer for some Facebook Pages WYSIWYG application, and this is their business model - as explained to me - when I asked, "Who is going to be buying our product?" My manager: "Oh, so we have all of these enterprise customers that purchase software from us. Basically, they are presented with a list of all of our various enterprise applications [FYI, there's a TON of them] with check boxes next to each one. Our application licenses are sold using a subscription model. Most companies don't bother reading the list and just pay for everything, which will include ours." WTF? I wrote some of the Ruby on Rails code for the application my team was working on. Also, this was in 2012; Facebook Pages had just been released, and no one even understood why a "Page" was the name given to a concept in which businesses could establish Facebook accounts in order to promote their brand and products, but a "Page" contained multiple "web pages" of content within the larger "Page" object. In short, our product sucked at every level and even I, a member of the development team, didn't know how to use it. But because it was on the almighty "Product List", it added millions of dollars to Oracle's net income, despite the fact that I'm guessing hardly any customer knew what it was, let alone knew how to use it. I resigned shortly after the first release, so I have no idea what happened to the product or how long it remained an official Oracle enterprise software application, appearing on the "Product List". While it was nice being 26 years old and making a $70,000 salary, receiving a nearly-guaranteed $10,000 annual bonus, having a 401k package with company-matched contributions, getting full healthcare benefits which included a FSA, and being able to order all of the free snacks and beverages that one could think of simply by telling the secretary to add them to the supply list . . . I just couldn't work at a place where innovation didn't matter, the customer didn't matter, and even the product didn't matter. Not to mention that, after having worked there, with 100 other people, for 3 months, maybe 10 people knew my name (and my product team consisted of 8 people - I'm only including 5 of them in the 10). I happened to discover one day that I was the youngest employee there, and I'm pretty sure that people didn't like me based on that fact alone. Oh well, I applied for a similar job at a digital marketing agency down the street the next week, and soon thereafter, began working again, now earning a salary which was $10,000 greater than what I made at Oracle (and which included all of the same benefits).
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  ...Which reminds me of another favorite quote from Cantrill. To paraphrase: My one regret is that I couldn't tender my resignation over [Oracle killing OpenSolaris] because I'd already left.
- selimthegrim 10y ago
  /s/Oracle/Intel as a software green badge and this sounds spookily identical to my life right around then too, right down to the salary and people not liking me because I was the youngest employee.
- joatmon-snoo 10y ago
  As a univerity senior, thank you for this. Oracle was already low on my list of companies to apply to for a full-time job, and this put the nail in that coffin.
  - senderista 10y ago
    If you're in the Seattle area, you still might want to consider Oracle Cloud (I don't work there). They've poached a shit-ton of senior AWS engineering talent, and from what I hear they're developing a kickass product.
  - deleted 10y ago
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