Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard? - mirianbert
======
sprice
Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development if illumos by Brian Cantrill
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc)

Quote copied from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246)

"As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these
generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well,
except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer
than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less
complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has
seen that complexity for my entire life, it's very hard to get used to that
idea. It's like, 'surely this is more complicated!' but it's like: Wow, this
is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This
company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon
humanity -- that's it! ...Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off,
screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah... you talk to
Oracle, it's like, 'no, we don't fucking make dreams happen -- we make money!'
...You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You
don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you
stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh,
the lawnmower hates me' \-- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower
can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that
trap about Oracle."

~~~
insertcredit
If that's the best technical talk you've ever seen, I have to feel sorry for
you. Cantrill may rant all he wants about Oracle but he's not exactly doing
better, with all the peddling of node.js to the masses. It is rare for me to
see someone come up with so much bullshit in one talk:
[https://vimeo.com/230142234](https://vimeo.com/230142234)

Since I don't want to end with a negative note, here is a personal favorite as
far as best technical talks go:

[https://tinyurl.com/hzpccxj](https://tinyurl.com/hzpccxj)

~~~
cipherzero
Could you maybe add a comment about what your favorite tech talk is? Right now
I’m staring at a tiny url hoping I’m not going to be rick rolled.

~~~
cataflam
It's _We Really Don 't Know How To Compute!_ by Gerald Jay Sussman

~~~
toomuchtodo
Previous HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3163473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3163473)

Direct download link for slides:
[https://github.com/strangeloop/2011-slides/raw/master/Sussma...](https://github.com/strangeloop/2011-slides/raw/master/Sussman-
WeDontKnowHowToCompute.pdf)

Youtube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3tVctB_VSU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3tVctB_VSU)

------
532nm
Control engineering

Gunter Stein's inaugural Bode prize lecture from 1989 titled "Respect the
Unstable" [0]. In this talk, he uses a minimum of mathematics to clearly
demonstrate the fundamental (and inevitable!) trade-offs in control systems
design. He effortlessly makes the link between his (in)ability to balance
inverted rods of various lengths on his palm (with shorter rods being harder
to balance) to why the X-29 aircraft was almost impossible to control and why
Chernobyl blew up.

The fundamental message is extremely important and the derivation is so
crystal clear that it is simply marvelous to watch him present it. I like it
so much that I re-watch it about once a year.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lhu31X94V4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Lhu31X94V4)

[1] Pdf transcription (use it to skim or go over the details. However, the
lecture is easier to follow and has a lot more than the transcript):
[https://jagger.berkeley.edu/~pack/me234/GSBode.pdf](https://jagger.berkeley.edu/~pack/me234/GSBode.pdf)

------
komuW
1\. Why Do Keynote Speakers Keep Suggesting That Improving Security Is
Possible? - James Mickens
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGX7odA87k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGX7odA87k)

2\. James Mickens on JavaScript - James Mickens
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5xh0ZIEUOE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5xh0ZIEUOE)

3\. Creating containers From Scratch - Liz Rice
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fi7uSYlOdc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fi7uSYlOdc)

4\. 2013 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: The Existence of Nothing - Panelists:
J. Richard Gott, Jim Holt, Lawrence Krauss, Charles Seife, Eve Silverstein.
Moderator: Neil deGrasse Tyson
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OLz6uUuMp8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OLz6uUuMp8)

5\. 2016 Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate: Is the Universe a Simulation? -
Panelists: David Chalmers, Zohreh Davoudi, James Gates, Lisa Randall, Max
Tegmark Moderator: Neil deGrasse Tyson
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgSZA3NPpBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgSZA3NPpBs)

6\. Zig: A programming language designed for robustness, optimality, and
clarity – Andrew Kelley
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4oYSByyRak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4oYSByyRak)

7\. Concurrency Is Not Parallelism - Rob Pike
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_DpYBzKso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_DpYBzKso)

~~~
soobrosa
[https://medium.com/@soobrosa/my-humble-james-mickens-
shrine-...](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)

------
mythz
Bret Victor talks are inspirational:

\- Inventing on Principal
[https://vimeo.com/36579366](https://vimeo.com/36579366)

\- Stop Drawing Dead Fish
[https://vimeo.com/64895205](https://vimeo.com/64895205)

~~~
yesenadam
Yep, I thought _Inventing on Principle_ was the best computer-related talk
I've ever watched. Not easy to describe what it's about! Design, tools, art,
UI, visualization, invention, life.

~~~
unixhero
It's like he has caught on to a kind of a zen thing. It is almost as if he
isn't even there, while presenting about a technological topic at all. That is
just the media for him to get an expanded wisdom across. What that message is
is hard to identify. But there is a glance of it at the end of inventing on
principle. It's a lot more profound than what the talk seems to be at the
surface.

I really wish he would publish more frequently He has inspired me greatly.

~~~
yesenadam
Yeah, I was marvelling half the time at the _wisdom_ , it makes other speakers
seem merely knowedgeable, clever, brilliant etc. I missed most of it in my
summary before. I love the

 _this is a cool way to live your life, according to some principle - this is
mine; these are some other amazing people who had their own_

aspect of it. His _creators should be able to see and control what they 're
doing as they do it_ principle is awesome, and he's maybe uniquely well-
equipped to do something about that. I wanna get the synth he designed!

~~~
jonnydubowsky
What's the synth?

~~~
FelipeCortez
Alesis Ion, Micron and Fusion

[http://worrydream.com/Home2007/electronics.html](http://worrydream.com/Home2007/electronics.html)

------
logandk
The most humorous would have to be the "Wat" talk by Gary Bernhardt:
[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat)

~~~
chx
Also [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-
death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-
javascript)

~~~
thsowers
The screenshot of GIMP running in Chrome running in Firefox is one of my
favorites!

------
drainyard
Two of my favorites:

code::dive conference 2014 - Scott Meyers: Cpu Caches and Why You Care:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDIkqP4JbkE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDIkqP4JbkE)

CppCon 2014: Mike Acton "Data-Oriented Design and C++":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc)

They're mostly about C++ and cache aware/data oriented programming.

~~~
sjellis
The Mike Acton talk is really valuable to anyone interested in efficient
software, and doesn't have so much C++ as to be a barrier: I found out about
it from a Go developer.

~~~
drainyard
Yes, I agree. It is more about a mindset rather than C++ specifically. I watch
again now and then just to remind myself of the lessons that can be learned
from it.

------
yaj54
The top 5 most referenced tech talks on HN are:

\- Douglas Engelbart - The Mother of All Demos

\- Bryan Cantrill - Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of illumos

\- Guy Steele - Growing a Language

\- David Heinemeier Hansson - Startup School 08

\- Rich Hickey - Hammock Driven Development

The top 50 are listed at [https://techyaks.com](https://techyaks.com) which I
recently updated with a ranking "techyaks score" that ranks talks (first) by
HN reference count.

~~~
jplayer01
This is great, thanks.

------
atq2119
John Carmack's talks, especially the ones from his id days at QuakeCon.

Watching somebody get on stage and just talk for hours in detail without notes
about a whole range of technical topics that they mastered and enjoy is pretty
inspiring.

~~~
fastbeef
I’m by no means a gamer but have always admired Carmack for his sheer
brilliance. I stumbled over one of his talks while doing something else and
jumped to various points in the talk. _Every. Single. Time._ he was talking
about something profound and the talk is friggin several hours long.

~~~
mywittyname
To make him more impressive, he had a pretty significant speech impediment
when he was younger. So he was never some natural orator, he had to work
extremely hard to sound like one.

------
pnambic
Guy L. Steele, "Growing a Language" (1998)
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0))

As far as technical presentations can be, this is a work of art, and in spite
of its age still completely relevant.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
And YouTube doesn’t even really capture his use of beautiful crayoned
transparencies in the live version of the talk!

Also, any talk where Richard Gabriel and Guy Steele get together will be a
treat. I really miss those old quirky OOPSLA days.

------
aidos
I'm not a Closure coder but I loved this talk on how as your tooling becomes
more complex and automated, you start to lose sight of simpler solutions to
problems. It's all about woodworking!

Tim Ewald - Clojure: Programming with Hand Tools
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShEez0JkOFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShEez0JkOFw)

~~~
wool_gather
Clojure people seem to give really good talks; it's starting to make me think
I should look into learning the language.

------
Heliosmaster
Hammock Driven Development by Rich Hickey:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc)

~~~
spdionis
Adding to that Simppe Made Easy, also by Rich Hickey

~~~
rys
Agreed. Here’s a link: [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-
Easy](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy)

------
jacobedawson
The Feynman Lectures (on Physics) are incredible - Feynman had such an amazing
mind, one of the greatest the world has known, yet could explain complex
things like he was talking to a friend in the living room over drinks. Never
patronizing, always amusing & informative:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3mhkYbznBk&list=PLLzGzdSNup...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3mhkYbznBk&list=PLLzGzdSNup63lMYeOpU9Hax6MBsTjdDas)

~~~
vagab0nd
This. And also "why magnets repell each other"
[https://youtu.be/36GT2zI8lVA](https://youtu.be/36GT2zI8lVA)

------
vinipolicena
"Design, Composition and Performance" by Rich Hickey. His view of what
improvising means is brilliant.

[https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Design-Composition-
Perfo...](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Design-Composition-Performance)

------
sasvari
Free Electron Lasers

...or why we need 17 billion Volts to make a picture.

[https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8832-free_electron_lasers](https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8832-free_electron_lasers)

HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028723](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16028723)

 _Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a microscope which allows scientists to map
atomic details of viruses, film chemical reactions, or study the processes in
the interior of planets? Well, we’ve just built one in Hamburg. It’s not
table-top, though: 1 billion Euro and a 3km long tunnel is needed for such a
‘free electron laser’, also called 4th generation synchrotron light source. I
will talk about the basic physics and astonishing facts and figures of the
operation and application of these types of particle accelerators.

Most people have heard about particle accelerators, most prominently LHC, at
which high energy particles are brought to collision in order to study
fundamental physics. However, in fact most major particle accelerators in the
world are big x-ray microscopes.

The latest and biggest of these synchrotron radiation sources which was built
is the European XFEL. A one billion Euro ‘free electron laser’, based on a
superconducting accelerator technology and spread out 3km beneath the city of
Hamburg. The produced x-ray pulses allow pictures, for example from proteins,
with sub-atomic resolution and an exposure time short enough to enable in-situ
studies of chemical reactions.

This talk aims to explain how particle accelerators and in particular light
sources work, for what reason we need these big facilities to enable new types
of science and why most of modern technology would be inconceivable without
them._

------
Qub3d
Indistinguishable From Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips [0]. This
talk is delivered really well and always leaves me with a sense of awe in how
CRAZY it is that humans figured out integrated circuits. Its a bit out of
date, but it gives enough of a peek under the hood to understand why Intel has
had such difficulties going to 10 and 7mn processes[1].

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGFhc8R_uO4)
[1]: [https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-cpu-10nm-earnings-
am...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-cpu-10nm-earnings-
amd,36967.html)

------
catwell
The talk that had the most influence on how I write software is Robert 'Uncle
Bob' Martin's "Architecture: The Lost Years" [1]. Being a Ruby conference
keynote, it helps if you know how Ruby on Rails works, but the lessons apply
to all software.

Another one would be "Let It Crash! The Erlang Approach to Building Reliable
Services" by Brian Troutwine. [2]

I don't know if you would call it "technical" but Brett Slatkin's talk on
Cohort Analysis is something anyone interested in tools to analyze how our
users behave should watch. [3]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpkDN78P884](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpkDN78P884)

[2] [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/erlang-reliable-
services](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/erlang-reliable-services)

[3] [https://www.onebigfluke.com/2013/05/video-cohort-analysis-
ta...](https://www.onebigfluke.com/2013/05/video-cohort-analysis-talk-at-
google.html)

------
unixhero
Elevator Hacking: From The Pit To The Penthouse by Deviant Ollam and Howard
Payne
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzrJjdZDRQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOzrJjdZDRQ)

They've done several iterations of this, including a censored/shorter version
for DEFCON 22. This version is the best, with all details, no secrets
withheld. I find the content rather stunning, and I've even watched it several
times.

~~~
smilesnd
I love this video it actually got me into fooling around with elevators. I
have a full box elevator keys just because of this talk, with no idea what to
do with them.

------
ryan-allen
Simple Made Easy by Rich Hickey [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-
Made-Easy](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy)

------
da_murvel
Define "technical". But when it comes to programming I always enjoy Sandi
Metz's talks. I can highly recomend this talk she made at the RailsConf in
2014, about taking an ugly beast of code and turning it to something more
digestable and beautiful
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZh5LMaSmE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bZh5LMaSmE)

~~~
patrickdavey
Totally agree, Sandi is awesome, all of her talks are worth watching. I quite
like the the one where she tells the future
[https://youtu.be/JOM5_V5jLAs](https://youtu.be/JOM5_V5jLAs) . I feel that
kind of step change will shortly be with us (if we're not already in the
middle of it)

~~~
OJFord
In the middle of a step change?

------
jhammons
"Is it really Complex? Or did we just make it Complicated?" (Alan Kay):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubaX1Smg6pY)

~~~
abhishekjha
This reminds me of a comment on a book titled ‘Discrete mathematics and its
application’ by Kenneth Rosen which was along the lines of how smart the
author was at the same time not being able to explain the concepts to someone
else in an easy manner and to be honest I had the same feeling. I understood
those concepts from other texts which definitely means that it isn’t me who
was was inadequate or not upto the task. I was willing to learn but the
smartest of the texts in the field left me feeling stupid. Can somebody else
chip in on this argument?

~~~
mabbo
I TA'd a fist year University course using, I believe, that textbook during my
final two years of undergrad.

The material itself is difficult to learn and harder to teach well. At my
University, it seemed that the Prof had to teach the subject for 3 or 4 years
before they could reasonably get half the class to pass the final exam.

At the same time, I've often felt like I would have no harder of a time
teaching the subject to 11 year olds. It's just a weird topic.

~~~
bordercases
Yeah, there's unity to it and no system other than "break the problem apart,
look for these properties, think hard, and match them to the identity that
also has these properties".

A lot of interpretation and intellectual confidence involved, difficult things
to communicate.

------
topkai22
Douglas Engelbert, “Augmenting Human Intelligence” from 1968. Introduced the
world to the mouse (and therefore the GUI), video conferencing, revision
control and basically the modern personal computing environment.

Also known as the “Mother of All Demos”. I don’t think I’ve watched the entire
thing in one sitting (I tend to jump over some of the drier parts), but I do
return to it every year or so because it helps me remember the lab innovations
of 1968 didn’t reach consumers until the mid/80s to late 90s, which helps me
keep innovation in perspective.

~~~
agumonkey
This was so unbelievable even by 2010s standard. Gotta thank Jay.

------
otras
Although not strictly a talk, I would highly recommend the first of the SICP
lectures[0], if only to expand your thinking about what computer science:

 _" I'd like to welcome you to this course on Computer Science. Actually
that's a terrible way to start. Computer science is a terrible name for this
business. First of all, it's not a science. It might be engineering or it
might be art. We'll actually see that computer so-called science actually has
a lot in common with magic. We will see that in this course. So it's not a
science. It's also not really very much about computers. And it's not about
computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle
accelerators. And biology is not really about microscopes and petri dishes.
And it's not about computers in the same sense that geometry is not really
about using a surveying instruments."_

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY)

~~~
mlevental
can someone please convince me that the use of the word "magic" is justified?
yes I know sicp is universally exalted in the cs/programming community and
even though I haven't read it yet I support the principle of a principled
approach to computation (it's math after all in the purest sense) but I can't
support the infantilism of words like magic and the wizard on the cover of the
book because the two themes are directly in opposition. there is no magic and
clear rigorous analysis of programs is very fruitful.

~~~
gmiller123456
Maybe it's just me (I haven't actually read the book), but I don't see the guy
on the cover as a wizard. He's holding a pair of dividers which I associate
much more with a craftsman or study of geometry. I just assumed the clothing
was a style I didn't understand.

~~~
enkiv2
He's an alchemist. The original version of the illustration says
salve/coagulate rather than eval/apply.

------
mitchtbaum
Alan Kay
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVw42wWZWrg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVw42wWZWrg)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdSD07U5uBs)

Ted Nelson
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcqIlDhkSdo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcqIlDhkSdo)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVU62CQTXFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVU62CQTXFI)

Doug Engelbart
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2zJLiYMoXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2zJLiYMoXk)

Steve Jobs
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmuP8gsgWb8)

Jacob Appelbaum
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntTnLO-4p1o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntTnLO-4p1o)

------
pdpi
Just about everything Kate Gregory has presented at cppcon is worth watching.
The nitty gritty tends to be C++-centric (as befits the venue), but the
overarching themes are more or less universal.

Where Rich Hickey's Simple Made Easy talks about simplicity at the macro
level, and mostly as an aspirational goal, Kate's talks focus on the
practicalities of actually achieving simplicity at the micro level.

------
chrisflink
Raymond Hettinger - Beyond PEP 8 -- Best practices for beautiful intelligible
code - PyCon 2015 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-
BqAjZb8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-BqAjZb8M)

------
g___
David Beazley: Python concurrency from the ground up
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCs5OvhV9S4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCs5OvhV9S4)

~~~
type0
Oh, Dabeaz has so many great talks. He has one of those teaching styles that
can contagiously convince even the most Python dismissive person to start
learning it.

~~~
agumonkey
Casually live coding any idiom even if the language didn't really support it.
Definitely worth your time.

------
afandian
Rich Hickey has a lot of excellent stuff to say. Not only are his ideas
philosophically sound, but also real, practical and ready to use in the form
of Clojure.

This recent review "10 years of Clojure", encapsulates a lot of of the wisdom:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V1FtfBDsLU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V1FtfBDsLU)

~~~
squeed
Agreed! "Hammock driven development" definitely has stuck with me over the
years:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc)

------
ldng
Not the best I've seen but definitively one I would like to recover the link
to : a Googler presentation where she explain how they took about 2 years
developing a memory optimisation (circa 2007~2009 IIRC) and manage to finish a
few months before it became indispensable because they were about to have an
hardware shortage. They were consuming hardware faster than the industry could
produce. I just can't remember who she was nor the link. Does it rings a bell
to anyone ?

~~~
havardk
I'm guessing it could be Anna Patterson
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Patterson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Patterson))

~~~
tminima
This is the only video where she mentions working on the problem -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7rzFqP3daI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7rzFqP3daI)

~~~
ldng
Hum, no it was not her. I think it was a Google I/O on googlevideo at the time
but I could be wrong. My memory is a bit fuzzy.

------
redmorphium
SVG can do that?! (Sarah Drasner)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADXX4fmWHbo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADXX4fmWHbo)

------
thephilsproject
The use and abuse of CT scanners

[https://media.ccc.de/v/emf2018-65-the-use-and-abuse-of-ct-
sc...](https://media.ccc.de/v/emf2018-65-the-use-and-abuse-of-ct-scanners)

Truly fascinating talk about the capability of CT scanners, not in a medical
environment. I don't want to say much more as I don't want to give any
spoilers.

------
StreakyCobra
I don't know if it is part of the bests, but very interesting anyway: Modern
Dictionaries by Raymond Hettinger [1] It's about Python 3.6 dictionaries
improvements.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p33CVV29OG8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p33CVV29OG8)

------
olavgg
Jake Archibald's "In the Loop", Visual explanation of how the javascript event
loop works! Awesome video for every javascript developer.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCOL7MC4Pl0&t=153s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCOL7MC4Pl0&t=153s)

------
wattengard
Jake Archibald talking about the javascript event loop and actually making it
both entertaining and easily grokable!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCOL7MC4Pl0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCOL7MC4Pl0)

~~~
keyvin
Another event loop talk from Philip Roberts. The tool he created to display
the event loop in real time is fantastic.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aGhZQkoFbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aGhZQkoFbQ)

------
timsneath
I'll call out one channel that I haven't seen on this thread -- the Computer
History Museum in Mountain View publishes some astonishing oral history
videos, presentations and other footage. So many of the challenges that
pioneers faced in the past have historical resonance; and unlike almost any
other major human revolution, the pioneers of our space are captured in video
that is readily available to all.

So you can hear the likes of Fred Brooks talking about IBM's approach to
unifying operating system interfaces with System/360[1], Bjarne Stroustrup
describing the origins of C++ [2], or watching Charles Simonyi and Tom Malloy
demonstrating Bravo, the Xerox PARC document writer [3].

Some quite astonishing material hidden in their archive that hasn't in my view
had nearly the audience it deserves.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c0_Lzb1CJw&t=5422s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8c0_Lzb1CJw&t=5422s))

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69edOm889V4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69edOm889V4)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_Na1SJXSBg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_Na1SJXSBg)

------
petermcneeley
"Papers I Have Loved" by Casey Muratori is a talk about CS algorithms useful
in the game industry.
[https://youtu.be/SDS5gLSiLg0](https://youtu.be/SDS5gLSiLg0)

------
js8
The Haskell Journey from Simon Peter-Jones:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re96UgMk6GQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re96UgMk6GQ)

------
dwrodri
Here is a good one that come to mind:

1\. This one is alive demo where the speaker derives the Y Combinator from
first principles. A really interesting exposition of functional programming at
its finest. Link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FITJMJjASUs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FITJMJjASUs)

------
highesttide
What has my compiler done for me lately? - Matt Godbolt

[https://youtu.be/bSkpMdDe4g4](https://youtu.be/bSkpMdDe4g4)

Entertaining talk, not extremely in depth, though.

------
denormalfloat
Java Puzzlers by Joshua Bloch and Jeremy Manson are pretty entertaining. For a
pretty bog standard language, Java has some more exotic corners:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbp-3BJWsU8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbp-3BJWsU8)

------
collyw
I really enjoyed "The Birth And Death Of Javascript".

[https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-
death...](https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-
javascript)

------
aargh_aargh
[https://techyaks.com/](https://techyaks.com/)

From a Show HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17988464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17988464)

~~~
myth_buster
I've been using this for finding videos to watch while eating and its been
great.

A lot of talks here do show up in the feed.

------
gumby
Richard Hamming (as in Hamming codes, Bell labs etc): "You and Your Research".
This had a profound effect on me at 18 when I heard him present it (it was by
then a "set piece" talk) and it still holds valuable advice for me now.

In general his published talks have all been good.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw)
or just read it at
[https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dahlin/bookshelf/hamming.html](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dahlin/bookshelf/hamming.html)

------
nnnate
Breaking the x86 Instruction Set by Christopher Domas.
[https://youtu.be/KrksBdWcZgQ](https://youtu.be/KrksBdWcZgQ)

I found it easy to follow and pretty entertaining.

------
xk0nsid
Probably one of the best introduction/starter to network programming with
Golang. I love this talk. The speaker doesn't just throw a bunch of terms and
theory at you, or slides, he just gets into the code and solves the problems
as they arise. Pretty good talk even if you are not interested in the network
programming.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afSiVelXDTQ&t=1208s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afSiVelXDTQ&t=1208s)

~~~
another-cuppa
Did you mean to start the video half way through?

------
DanPristupov
Here are some of my favorites:

How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAb7hSCtvGw)

Agile Methods The Good, the Hype and the Ugly
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffkIQrq-m34&t=420s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffkIQrq-m34&t=420s)

------
creyes
Implementing a Strong Code-Review Culture: Derek Prior (2015) -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJjmw9TRB7s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJjmw9TRB7s)

I guess this is more of a 'soft talk' but I still reference this all the time
and watch it at least once a year. One of the more relevant and practical
talks for any software company.

------
alexeiz
I recommend Sean Parent's talks: [http://sean-parent.stlab.cc/papers-and-
presentations/](http://sean-parent.stlab.cc/papers-and-presentations/). Pretty
much everything is very good. It's usually C++-centric, but his subjects are
deep enough to be useful to software engineering in any language.

~~~
agumonkey
Is he still on réversible computations ?

------
unixhero
You Spent All That Money And You Still Got Pwned by Joseph Mccray
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJsNu0VRKYY&t=14s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJsNu0VRKYY&t=14s)

Very terse and content rich security walkthrough of corporate IT security
fails by Joseph. I find delivery also highly entertaining.

------
pmiri
Propositions as Types by Philip Wadler

A really in depth look into why functional languages stand out as a
programming paradigm. The short of it being that they parallel perfectly
(almost proof for proof!) with mathematical logic.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOiZatlZtGU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOiZatlZtGU)

------
pedro1976
Hacking the mind, how to get your brain into the right mode

Marty Lobdell - Study Less Study Smart [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlU-
zDU6aQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlU-zDU6aQ0)

AJ Jacobs: The Importance of Self-Delusion in the Creative Process”
[https://vimeo.com/68572000](https://vimeo.com/68572000)

\--

On Machine Learning biases

Aylin Caliskan - A Story of Discrimination and Unfairness
[https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8026-a_story_of_discrimination_a...](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8026-a_story_of_discrimination_and_unfairness)

\--

On scaling test automation, why scaling does not deliver the value you want

GTAC2016: Scale vs Value - Test Automation at the BBC
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkPHntWZAPc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkPHntWZAPc)

\--

On Future of Machine Learning

Joscha Bach - Machine Dreams (33c3)
[https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8369-machine_dreams](https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8369-machine_dreams)

Joscha Bach - Computational Meta-Psychology (32c3)
[https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7483-computational_meta-
psycholo...](https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7483-computational_meta-psychology)

Joscha Bach - From Computation to Consciousness (31c3)
[https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6573_-_en_-
_saal_2_-_201412281...](https://media.ccc.de/v/31c3_-_6573_-_en_-
_saal_2_-_201412281130_-_from_computation_to_consciousness_-_joscha)

[Edit] Layout

------
egourlao
The Scandalous Story of Dreadful Code Written by the Best of Us - by Katrina
Owen
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp_ST9nbf5M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp_ST9nbf5M)

This talk made a strong impression on me when I was figuring out how to write
more beautiful, and more readable code.

------
knbknb
I like the talk by Ryan Dahl, node.js inventor

Original Node JS Presentation, 2009,
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztspvPYybIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztspvPYybIY)

In 2018 he gave a follow-up presentation "10 things I regret about node", but
that presentation is more for experts.

------
dunk010
Steve Yegge talking about the system he built at Google, called Grok:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTJs-0EInW8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTJs-0EInW8).

If we have anything half that good in the wider programming community in
twenty years time, I will be very surprised.

------
amrrs
Recent Previous:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12637239](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12637239)

Slightly old:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16838460](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16838460)

------
steve_gh
Many years ago, I had the privilege of having Prof Peter Saunders as my MSc
adviser while at King's College London. Peter Saunders was (apart from being a
great educationalist), the person who did the maths behind James Lovelock's
Gaia hypothesis. He was far and away the best maths teacher I ever had.

Anyway, he also taught a dynamical systems (chaos theory) class to a mixture
of MSc students and final year undergrads. On this occasion, he was explaining
some principle, and was busy talking while writing on the board.

He turns round, and there is a sea of blank looking faces in front of him. No
one has understood.

"Well it's obvious" he says, and turns back to the board.

2 minutes later, he turns back. Now there is a sea of bored looking faces in
front of him. Why?

Well it's obvious...

Everyone understood completely. Genius at work

------
marcoc
CCC (Lange, Domke) - The exhaust emissions scandal ("Dieselgate")

[https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scand...](https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7331-the_exhaust_emissions_scandal_dieselgate)

------
ivanmaeder
Demo of Ivan Sutherland's 1963 Sketchpad:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6orsmFndx_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6orsmFndx_o)

It was a drawing app with the following features:

Snap to object ("This allows me to be sloppy while I'm drawing and get a
precision drawing at the same time"), connected vectors, arcs, alignment with
other objects, copying, multiple "files," scaling ("It scales approximately 2
miles in size"), 3D, etc etc

It blows me away that this kind of UI was even conceived in the 1960s. It
feels like there was a dark ages middle period after then until quite
recently.

------
winrid
I hope this isn't too much of a stretch. Heard it recently and thought it was
really interesting.

[https://youtu.be/4YYvBLAF4T8](https://youtu.be/4YYvBLAF4T8)

~~~
yesenadam
It's a stretch to expect me to click on it without you saying what it is!

~~~
suprfnk
It's funny that you do go to the trouble of commenting this, which probably
takes longer and more effort than clicking the link. I do get your point
though.

~~~
yesenadam
I was doing it for everyone, not just for me. Your comment adds nothing to HN
except ill-feeling.

------
wedesoft
Jim Weirich's talks about "connascence".

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22vYwcfQnk8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22vYwcfQnk8)

------
SuddsMcDuff
"The Power of Composition" by Scott Wlaschin

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhEkBCWpDas](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhEkBCWpDas)

------
rvazquezglez
"Elixir should take over the world" by Jessica Kerr
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25xOhntr6s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25xOhntr6s)

Despite the title is about Elixir, Jessica exposes a lot of topics like how
ideas arise at the same time from different people, what different programming
paradigms offer and how can they work together, error handling in a myriad of
paths, and mainly people.

------
jor-el
Thomas Dullien (halvarflake) on security, moore's law and anomaly of cheap
complexity. In the talk Thomas discusses the idea why simplicity is important
and how increasing complexity increases attack surface.

[https://www.err.ee/836236/video-google-0-projekti-
tarkvarain...](https://www.err.ee/836236/video-google-0-projekti-
tarkvarainseneri-ettekanne-cyconil)

------
cafard
After seeing the top-voted one, perhaps I should hesitate here. But I do
remember Kevin Loney's "Controlled Flight into Terrain", on what you can do
wrong with databases, as very good. I saw it at a regional Oracle users group
years ago.

More recently I have looked at Raymond Hettinger's "Beyond PEP 8--Best
Practices for Beautiful Intelligible Code", and I hope improved my Python as a
result.

------
vesinisa
"Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?" by Karsten Nohl and Nemanja
Nikodijevic from CCC 2016. It exposes how insanely ancient and insecure the
global flight booking system is, allowing for stealing of personal information
and even other people's flight tickets.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8WVo-
YLyAg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8WVo-YLyAg)

------
Mironor
Silver bullet: Hadi Hariri (2015) -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wyd6J3yjcs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wyd6J3yjcs)

Every time people think a technology will solve all their problems (remember
guys from NOSQL back in the days?), they need to see this talk. The speaker
also did this talk as a keynote a couple of times during other conferences.

------
giancarlostoro
It's not directly technical although it does speak about technical things, but
Steve Blank's talks about the "secret history" of Silicon Valley are amazing.
He's got some on YouTube, and links to some on his blog. He talks about how
different tech was made to fight the Nazis, Soviets and co and how they made
their own tech, and how it just became an arms race, whilst also spawning a
good chunk of Silicon Valley startups and how it affected VC money down road.
You get tech and Silicon Valley (/ and) history and business all in one.

[https://steveblank.com/secret-history/](https://steveblank.com/secret-
history/)

------
simonhorlick
Miško Hevery's talks on writing testable code. Watching those videos
immediately made me a better developer, lots of well explained, practical
advice:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcT4yYu_TTs&index=6&list=PLD...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcT4yYu_TTs&index=6&list=PLD0011D00849E1B79)

------
crivabene
21st Century Application Architectures by Werner Vogels, 2013
[https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/4023-21st-century-
appli...](https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/4023-21st-century-application-
architectures)

I can’t even say how many times I recommended someone to watch it - even
today, 5 years after.

------
pasta
GOTO 2016 • Secure Coding Patterns • Andreas Hallberg

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqd9bxy5Hvc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqd9bxy5Hvc)

Simple advice to create more secure and imho bug-free code.

Some of his advice:

Let functions return what they promise. Don't return null or false, but throw
exceptions.

Use immutable objects.

Use domain objects.

Don't black-list: white-list.

------
ivanmaeder
Not so much technical, but my favourite talk _about_ technology and more:

"Back to the Future (of 1994)." Danny Hillis (1994). 19 mins

[https://www.ted.com/talks/danny_hillis_back_to_the_future_of...](https://www.ted.com/talks/danny_hillis_back_to_the_future_of_1994)

------
ElectronShak
Messaging at Scale at Instagram -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E708csv4XgY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E708csv4XgY)

Covers many things but I specifically got to understand how they use Redis to
manage stuff like photo updates to follower / following lists.

------
veganjay
Play CTF! A Great Way to Learn Hacking by LiveOverflow
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfjV8XukxO8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfjV8XukxO8)

This talk is less technical than his other videos, but really catches the
spirit of discovery, failure and learning.

------
kilian
Making impossible states impossible" by Richard Feldman:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcgmSRJHu_8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcgmSRJHu_8)
has really changed the way I approach dealing with data in my code and was
very insightful.

------
virde
Technically not a tech talk but since it was at Talks at Google, this one:
Frank Abagnale: "Catch Me If You Can" | Talks at Google - YouTube

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMydMDi3rI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsMydMDi3rI)

------
eduardsi
Ian Cooper's "TDD, Where Did It All Go Wrong" (which Uncle Bob Martin has
recommended on his Twitter):
[https://dev.tube/video/EZ05e7EMOLM](https://dev.tube/video/EZ05e7EMOLM)

------
gt2
Zebras All the Way Down - Bryan Cantrill, Uptime 2017
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE2KDzZaxvE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE2KDzZaxvE)

Lots of great tangents that add to the subjects. I love talks like this.

------
netpascal
Douglas Crockford on the good parts of Javascript
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEzQf147-uEpvTa1bHDNl...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEzQf147-uEpvTa1bHDNlxUL2klHUMHJu)

~~~
Timpy
I excitedly clicked this link, thinking I'd love some insight from the
JavaScript an himself. I can't digest 104 videos, I was hoping for a really
good 1~2 hour presentation. I'm going to cherry pick a video or two, if
anybody has a favorite they can recommend.

------
cosmic_quanta
A Better Default Colormap for Matplotlib
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU))

This talk is made better by the fact that it's rather brief (~20min).

------
jeffreyrogers
The CMU Database Lecture series is great. Requires a fair amount of background
knowledge on how DBs work to follow though.

[https://db.cs.cmu.edu/seminar2018/](https://db.cs.cmu.edu/seminar2018/)

------
JanVanRyswyck
Here's a list that I've curated over the past several years:
[https://github.com/JanVanRyswyck/awesome-
talks](https://github.com/JanVanRyswyck/awesome-talks)

~~~
rptr_87
Thanks for this.

------
tyingq
Brendan Gregg's talks on Linux performance. Scroll down to "Talks":
[http://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html](http://www.brendangregg.com/linuxperf.html)

------
tomashm
Statistics for Hackers by Jake Vanderplas
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq9DzN6mvYA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq9DzN6mvYA)

A really nice intuitive intro to resampling methods.

------
daganev
Uncle Bob and his talks about architecture are a must.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEeEic-c0D4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEeEic-c0D4)

------
georgecalm
You may like [https://techyaks.com](https://techyaks.com) — it’s a site with
over 80K software development tech talks ranked algorithmically.

------
ntlk
Programming with nothing by Tom Stuart [https://codon.com/programming-with-
nothing](https://codon.com/programming-with-nothing)

------
ranjeethacker
Rob Pike - 'Concurrency Is Not Parallelism'

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_DpYBzKso](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_DpYBzKso)

~~~
quickthrower2
And Concurrency Is Not Not Parallelism

------
chan729
MIT Pathway to Fusion Energy:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KuAx1COEk)

------
tyurok
Greg Young - The art of destroying software

He has a few talks that he barely uses any presentation material and it's very
good.

------
hguhghuff
Any episode of The Ben Heck Show on YouTube.

------
lewispb
Kent Beck - 3X

------
expathacker
_10+ deployments per day from Velocity 2009._ It was really a pivotal talk in
the early days of the DevOps movement

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdOe18KhtT4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdOe18KhtT4)

 _Fixing Twitter: Improving the Performance and Scalability of the World 's
Most Popular Micro-blogging Site_ by John Adams (then from Twitter)at Velocity
2009 (Velocity 2009 was really an incredibly pivotal and influential
conference in the DevOps movement).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X_ed6GPofQ&t=26s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X_ed6GPofQ&t=26s)

 _Bootstrapping an Infrastructure_ by Steve Traugott at Lisa 1998. I don't
know of any videos of the talk, but the related paper eventually lead to
Puppet and the beginning of the modern configuration management software

[https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Bootstrapping-an-
Infra...](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Bootstrapping-an-
Infrastructure-Traugott-Huddleston/aa92492a7c2d240dee0f006a0fe6a0bf401e628a)

 _There is no talent shortage_ by Andrew Schaefer, co-founder of Puppet from
Velocity NYC 2013.

[https://vimeo.com/75670082](https://vimeo.com/75670082)

(edited for consistant formatting)

------
hguhghuff
YouTube is absolutely packed with technical channels on any software /
computing topic that interests you.

~~~
ArchTypical
...and youtube doesn't have everything.

e.g. What we actually know about Software Development and why we know it's
true.

[https://vimeo.com/9270320](https://vimeo.com/9270320)

Seriously, what was the point of your comment?

