"Stop Writing Dead Programs" by Jack Rusher (Strange Loop 2022)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN returns to it constantly as the talk on live programming and what modern tooling is missing, though a few found it too much.
What it is
Jack Rusher's Strange Loop 2022 talk argues that most programming languages are still designed around punchcard-era assumptions. He makes the case for live, interactive programming environments, drawing on Lisp, Smalltalk and REPL-driven development.
Recommended by 9 HN commenters across 8 different months, 2022 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec jasonjmcghee · 2025-04 · on “Graphics livecoding in Common Lisp”
Live development is still so under-explored, and is just so exciting to work with. One of my favorite talks is "Stop Writing Dead Programs" ( [this video] ) and touches on a lot of what could be in terms of live development. Lisp is very well-suited to live development due to code being data, but live development doesn't need to be lispy. I built a live development extension for Love2D which lets you do graphics livecoding (both lua and glsl) in real-time - every keystroke updating the output, (if a valid program). [LINK] Here are some (early) demos of things you can do with it: [LINK] So many cool things once you break down the barrier between editor and running program. I've also asked myself t
Recommends okaleniuk · 2023-01 · on “LearnCPP: Website devoted to teaching you how to program in C++”
Because we live in a free society and smoking is a proper right. It is unhealthy and largely outdated habit but if you want to light a cigarette, you can. Programming in C++ is also an outdated habit. There are better languages, better technologies, and there are generally better ways to create software than writing code, compiling the code, replacing std::abs with abs (real issue, these are different functions) and recompiling the code again. But writing in a horrible language is a proper right as well. People write in Brainfuck for fun and good for them! Jack Rusher sums up what better programming looks like in his Strange Loop talk [this video]
Recommends ttctciyf · 2023-01 · on “Ask HN: What's your unpopular tech, programming opinion”
Your "unpopular rant" (or one pretty much like it) has 376k views and 12k likes on youtube![1] (Recommended watch, not least for demystifying the origin of vi's navigation keys and the choice of ~/ for /home/you.) 1: [this video] (link jumps to 16:52)
Recommends trashburger · 2023-08 · on “Dart 3.1 and a retrospective on functional style programming in Dart”
I believe this to be an artifact of our current paradigm of software development, which is based purely around static "batch processing" where the software can't be molded easily. (I didn't want it to come off as a plug, so I didn't add it to my original message, but I'm working on something to solve that.) To get a better idea of what I think is the better approach, check out these talks: Tudor Gîrba - Moldable development - [LINK] Jack Rusher - Stop Writing Dead Programs - [this video]
Recommends llm_trw · 2024-03 · on “(How to Write a (Lisp) Interpreter (In Python)) (2010)”
It's pretty much impossible to explain to people what it's like to work in a CL environment. A good presentation on what we're missing: [this video]
Recommends iLemming · 2024-05 · on “A Road to Common Lisp (2018)”
> trying to understand what's happening in code is even harder It's different in Lisp because you basically program a thing from the inside out, meaning that you don't just read the code from top to bottom. Instead, you constantly evaluate expressions and expand macros while going through it. It's practically like playing a game, and there's a good amount of fun. People often dismiss Lisps (Clojure, CL, Fennel, Racket, etc.) after reading Lisp code without any connected REPL and often don't even grasp what makes it so awesome. It's like disliking food after seeing it for the first time in a cooking show on TV. Good talk of relevance: "Stop Writing Dead Programs by Jack Rusher" [this video]
Recommends iLemming · 2024-05 · on “The Evolution of Lisp (1993) [pdf]”
> simple examples comparing Lisp ... that illustrate the benefits of using Lisp over another language It depends on what you're trying to get out of it. For example, you can grab a simple code of some React components with JSX and ask ChatGPT to write it in Hiccup (Clojure). That would show you how s-expressions can reduce the syntax boilerplate and make it smaller. You can do the same thing with Lua and Fennel - Fennel code would be much shorter and cleaner. However, without proper understanding and using structural editing and connected REPL, you probably won't see any benefits right away. Lisp code is not the best to be read off the "dead medium" - paper or screen. It's better when you ha
Recommends imachine1980_ · 2024-06 · on “Lisp: Icing or Cake?”
Hi I think is in the hypothesis (I'm not sure) of that we have edition made by the pdp 11 keyboard developer and tooling that's old and design whiout introspection in mind showcase in this video, the video is really cool but little bit long [this video]