Programming is terrible—Lessons learned from a life wasted. EMF2012
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN lists it among its favorite programming talks and fantastic technical speeches.
What it is
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.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2015 to 2022.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec hire_charts · 2016-02 · on “Rich Hickey Fanclub”
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. [this 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]
Recommends jppope · 2018-07 · on “Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?”
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. T
Recommends iwwr · 2022-02 · on “Ask HN: Inspiring hacker talks and presentations?”
Rich Hickey - Hammock-driven development: [LINK] Brett Victor - Inventing on principle: [LINK] Programming is terrible: [this 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]
Cites cremno · 2015-03 · on “Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]”
Just the slides do. Maybe he later thought the same and then omitted or replaced that suggestion in his talk. [this video]
Cites eddd · 2016-01 · on “I Open-Sourced All My Business Ideas”
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. [this video]
Cites vanderZwan · 2020-01 · on “Godot Engine – A decade in retrospective and future”
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] [this video]