
Ask HN: What tech talk does everyone need to see? - JunaidBhai
Any lecture, TED talk or anything that one&#x27;s talk that changed the way you think and you feel everyone needs to see?
======
earthicus
I really enjoyed the 'Four Algorithmic Journeys' Lecture series by Stepanov.
(actually theres only 3 journeys) It is a combination of teaching your some
basics of developing (generic) Algorithms, basic abstract algebra, and some
(not always super accurate) history of mathematics.

1\. The first journey starts with an ancient Egyptian multiplication
algorithm. When we think about what is required for it to work, we are
immediately lead to the axioms of a semi-group, and various examples are
considered.

2\. The second journey starts with division, and then Euclid GCD algorithm. We
extend it to polynomials and beyond, and are led to the definition of a ring &
euclidean domain. A surprising application to permutation algorithms is given
as well!

3\. The third journey is about the peano axioms and has a bit of logic and
compatibility theory, then the peano axioms are weakened a bit to produce the
notion of an _iterator_ from programming.

Abstract algebra really seems like a much more relevant 'mathematics of
everyday programming' than the usual subject CS students take, which seem to
appear in domain specific technical work. By contrast, abstract algebra is to
some extent elementary arithmetic and algebra, but extended to _non-numerical
data_ , of the kind that appears all time in general-purpose computing.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/A9Videos/playlists](https://www.youtube.com/user/A9Videos/playlists)

------
bitwize
The Mother of All Demos.

I'm tired of talks. I would much rather most hackers organize their thoughts
and set them down for posterity in the form of essays, white papers, and the
like, rather than succumb to the temptation of listening to oneself speak. If
one must present, either set it down in written form also (slides don't
count), or have something so mindblowing to present that no writing can do it
justice (as Engelbart did). Otherwise, making me sit through a video instead
of reading what you're trying to say is simply wasting my time.

The curse of "documentation by talk" \-- which I hope more Hackernews will
join me in excoriating -- has become particularly pernicious, especially among
millennial and younger programmers.

~~~
zapzupnz
¿Porqué no los dos?

Sometimes I like to listen to a talk when I'm doing something else. Busy
coding, listening to someone chatting on a topic, and when something really
piques my interest I can temporarily put aside what I'm doing.

Apart from that, there's clearly an audience for these talks. Oftentimes they
take pages and pages of undecipherable technical documentation and put it into
an easy-to-swallow form such that people can twig about things that they
didn't know interested them.

Excoriation, that's a bit far and, if I might say, a little elitist. There's
place for long-form written content and there's place for presentations.

------
gumby
Richard Hamming: You and Your Research

It's on picking the right problems. When I heard him give it I was shocked
that he criticized Einstein for working on a unified field theory (of course
unlike me, he was actually _qualified_ to offer such criticism). His point for
that example was that the necessary tools to attack the problem hadn't yet
been developed so it was a fruitless endeavor. While many very important
problems _are_ tractable.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw)

He gave this talk several times (I heard it at NASA in 84). Here's a good
transcript:
[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html)

~~~
guiambros
Fascinating indeed; thanks for sharing!

------
goo
Rich Hickey has some fantastic talks: [https://changelog.com/posts/rich-
hickeys-greatest-hits](https://changelog.com/posts/rich-hickeys-greatest-hits)

My favorite is [https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-
Hi...](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Are-We-There-Yet-Rich-Hickey)

------
navinsylvester
What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System
talk by Prof. Michael Levin -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg)

------
brylie
Bret Victor has some really inspiring ideas, inspired to some extent by Alan
Kay.

Media for Thinking the Unthinkable:
[http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/](http://worrydream.com/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable/)

The Future of Programming:
[http://worrydream.com/dbx/](http://worrydream.com/dbx/)

A powerful idea about ideas
[https://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_ab...](https://www.ted.com/talks/alan_kay_shares_a_powerful_idea_about_ideas/)

~~~
JunaidBhai
Wow! These are indeed great content.

------
m0llusk
Google Tech Talks Personal Growth Series: Dr William Dement on Healthy Sleep
and Optimal Performance (2008-09-23)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hAw1z8GdE8)

------
thedevindevops
Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology

