Programming is terrible—Lessons learned from a life wasted. EMF2012
tef ebooks3 HN recommenders · 2015–2022
1.7M views · talk · evergreen · Uploaded 2013-01-30
Tef's EMF 2012 talk on lessons from a career in programming, a candid and humorous look at why programming is so often terrible. Slides and a draft script are available online.
HN lists it among its favorite programming talks and fantastic technical speeches.
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6 comments from Hacker News
Just the slides do. Maybe he later thought the same and then omitted or replaced that suggestion in his talk. [VIDEO]
I don't mean to troll, but having ideas is nothing. Of course projects start with ideas but if the creator of the idea didn't pursue given concept - neither should you. [VIDEO]
That and Hammock Driven Development: [LINK] Both of these talks are in my top 5. Edit (okay, here are the other 3): * All the Little Things by Sandi Metz [LINK] * Programming is terrible—Lessons learned from a life wasted. [VIDEO] * Some talk I saw by Dan McKinley on making Data-Driven decisions. I can't find the original video, but here's a really similar one: [LINK]
1) Do not attempt to live code. change your code via version control, build small videos, copy and paste... whatever you do... do not try and live code 2) Read "The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs" ... its not really about Steve Jobs so much as its about how to be a great presenter. 3) building or writing a talk is significantly less important than the delivery... which means that more of your time should be spent on how to deliver the speech (recording I find is the best way to practice) 4) Pick a single thing and do it well, do not attempt to put too much into a talk or tackle something massively complex. 5) Make sure that everyone is walking away with something they can actually use. This doesn't require it be a hard skill... "Soft" or philosophical utilities are just as good 6) Have Fun and be funny... Speakers have a tendency to want to show off the size of their intellect, and the level their competency- having a speech be entertaining is way way more important. 7) DO NOT READ FROM YOUR SLIDES. know your shit. slides are supplementary Extra Credit. Here's a collection of some fantastic technical speeches: * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] * [VIDEO] * [LINK] * [LINK]
I think it's a rehash (conscious or not) of Thomas Figg's famous "Webapps, or as I like to call them: Skins around databases." -joke that he used in his "Programming is terrible—Lessons learned from a life wasted" talk from many years ago. It's no longer completely true, but honestly it's still kind of true. And I've been making my living writing them for years now ;) [0] [VIDEO]
Rich Hickey - Hammock-driven development: [LINK] Brett Victor - Inventing on principle: [LINK] Programming is terrible: [VIDEO] Dave Beazely - Python concurrency from the ground up (applicable to languages in general, with generator and corourine functionality) [LINK] Functional programming, with birds: [LINK] Short and classic: Wat [LINK]