13 videos · 11 hr 8 minTalks every programmer should watch
These are the talks that turn up in thread after thread when someone asks what every programmer should see. None of them is a language tutorial. The list starts with Rich Hickey's Simple Made Easy, then moves through design and APIs, everyday code craft and testing, ways of thinking, and working with other people. It ends with two wider looks at the state of software.
Play all on YouTube- 11:01:39
"Simple Made Easy" - Rich Hickey (2011)
Strange Loop Conference · Picked by 14 · 2022–2026The place to start: Hickey's split between simple (not intertwined) and easy (familiar) gives you a vocabulary for complexity that the rest of this list keeps using, and HN calls it a must-watch even if you never touch Clojure.
- 21:01:40
A Philosophy of Software Design | John Ousterhout | Talks at Google
Talks at Google · Picked by 11 · 2018–2026Ousterhout's hour on deep modules and managing complexity is HN's standard short version of his book, and a practical companion to Hickey's ideas.
- 31:00:19
How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters
Google TechTalks · Picked by 12 · 2011–2025Joshua Bloch treats every programmer as an occasional API designer, and HN has called this the best resource on the subject since 2011.
- 438:47
RailsConf 2014 - All the Little Things by Sandi Metz
Confreaks · Picked by 15 · 2015–2025Moving from design to the code itself, Metz refactors a tangle of conditionals into small objects and explains why duplication is cheaper than the wrong abstraction.
- 5
25:06"Making Impossible States Impossible" by Richard Feldman
elm-conf · Picked by 9 · 2017–2026A short talk on shaping your data so that whole classes of bugs cannot happen; the examples are in Elm, but HN commenters say the ideas carry over to any typed language.
- 6
45:55Ruby Conf 12 - Boundaries by Gary Bernhardt
Confreaks · Picked by 8 · 2015–2024The talk that introduced 'functional core, imperative shell', which HN recommends as a practical answer to how to test code without mocking everything.
- 7
1:03:55🚀 TDD, Where Did It All Go Wrong (Ian Cooper)
DevTernity Conference · Picked by 11 · 2018–2024Cooper goes back to Kent Beck's original idea of testing behaviour rather than implementation details, and many commenters say it changed how they write tests.
- 8
39:49Hammock Driven Development - Rich Hickey
ClojureTV · Picked by 12 · 2014–2024From code to thinking: Hickey's case for stepping away from the keyboard and letting your background mind solve the problem, which HN treats as permission to think before you type.
- 9
54:20Bret Victor - Inventing on Principle
Rui Oliveira · Picked by 12 · 2013–2025Victor's live demos of tools that show results as you type, plus his argument for organising your work around a principle, left one commenter writing that it blew their mind.
- 10
53:31Growing a Language, by Guy Steele
Bill Pugh · Picked by 11 · 2014–2026Steele makes his point about extensible languages by giving the talk in one-syllable words plus terms he defines as he goes, and HN calls it perhaps the best talk ever on the topic.
- 11
55:17Google I/O 2009 - The Myth of the Genius Programmer
Google for Developers · Picked by 5 · 2011–2024Software is a team sport: Fitzpatrick and Collins-Sussman make the case for humility, code review and sharing work early, and HN readers call it career-shaping.
- 12
45:50"The Mess We're In" by Joe Armstrong
Strange Loop Conference · Picked by 10 · 2014–2025Erlang's co-creator gives a funny, opinionated tour of why software got so tangled, which HN still finds accurate years later.
- 13
1:02:42Preventing the Collapse of Civilization / Jonathan Blow (Thekla, Inc)
DevGAMM · Picked by 14 · 2020–2025The widest view to end on: Blow argues that knowledge gets lost between generations and that software quality is already slipping, and his talk is the usual link in HN threads on software decay.