Great Impractical Ideas in Computer Science: PowerPoint Programming
Why Hacker News recommends it
Repeatedly recommended in best-talks threads as a fun, mind-blowing demonstration of unexpected computation.
What it is
Tom Wildenhain's guest lecture for CMU's Esoteric Programming Languages course shows that PowerPoint transitions and slides are Turing complete without macros, building up to a mind-bending fractal ending.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2020 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec gregsadetsky · 2020-12 · on “Ask HN: Best Talks of 2020?”
I would also very highly recommend you watch this talk about PowerPoint’s Turing-completeness — [this video] It’s from the same person (Tom Wildenhain) as your video, but this is an hour long, there’s an actual audience (that’s supportive and spends most of the talk in disbelief), and the end with recursive slides / fractals is an absolute mind melt. Strong recommend! :) Thanks for the suggestions/reminder!
Strong rec gnatman · 2023-12 · on “Ask HN: Best tech talks you have heard in 2023?”
"Great Impractical Ideas in Computer Science: PowerPoint Programming" Tom Wildenham (2019) [this video] Really fun, kinda blew my mind. Guy got a job at Microsoft shortly after giving this talk.
Recommends K0SM0S · 2020-01 · on “The “No Code” Delusion”
I think this drives your point with incredible wit: “On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint (SIGBOVIK)” by Tom Wildenhain[1]. (5 minutes video) [1]: [LINK] (Nerding out should always be hilarious like that!) [2]: Recording of a guest lecture he gave for the Esoteric Programming Languages course at CMU. (~1h) [this video]
Recommends jjmarr · 2024-07 · on “Ask HN: What's the best YouTube lecture you've seen recently?”
[this video] PowerPoint programming by Tom Wildenhain. He does not use VBA macros, just shows that PowerPoint transitions and slides are Turing Complete.
Cites ndiddy · 2026-05 · on “Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2”
Microsoft actually does a fairly good job with this. Here's a part of a talk that goes over a single feature in PowerPoint (a slide animation that morphs the contents of one slide into a different slide) and demonstrates how this feature interacts with the enormous existing PowerPoint feature set in interesting ways. [this video] It's obviously a stupid gimmicky feature but whatever team Microsoft put on it were clearly overachievers.