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Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?

#131

Post by TimTheTinker »

sprice wrote: post #19

Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development if illumos by Brian Cantrill https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc Quote copied from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246 "As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There…

Although not strictly technical, this is a great talk. Bryan effectively communicates both the history and the mindset of Sun Microsystems and its open-source software heroes, and the bitter disappointment of being taken over by Oracle.

I love this quote (about 33:15) summarizing Sun Microsystems:

Kicked butt, had fun, didn't cheat, loved our customers, changed computing forever.

"It makes me very proud to have worked for a company for whom that is completely accurate. We should all be so lucky as to have that be our epitaph. That is all I want out of my life. That and my family. [...] That is Sun. But that's not Oracle." --Bryan Cantrill. (A very excellent Oracle rant follows immediately after.)

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?

#133

Post by jplayer01 »

yaj54 wrote: post #130

The top 5 most referenced tech talks on HN are: - Douglas Engelbart - The Mother of All Demos - Bryan Cantrill - Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of illumos - Guy Steele - Growing a Language - David Heinemeier Hansson - Startup School 08 - Rich Hickey - Hammock Driven Development The top 50 are listed at https://techyaks.com which I recently updated with a ranking "techyaks score" that ranks talks (first) by HN re…

This is great, thanks.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?

#134

Post by jplayer01 »

atq2119 wrote: post #30

John Carmack's talks, especially the ones from his id days at QuakeCon. Watching somebody get on stage and just talk for hours in detail without notes about a whole range of technical topics that they mastered and enjoy is pretty inspiring.

I feel it was a huge loss that he no longer holds talks in any capacity. We get a detailed and incredibly interesting blog post from him like every 12 months, but otherwise, nothin'.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?

#135

Post by atonse »

sprice wrote: post #19

Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development if illumos by Brian Cantrill https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc Quote copied from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5170246 "As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There…

Oh Bryan Cantrill... (don't worry, not criticizing him below)

This is someone whose mind seems to be going at 500mph all the time. I used to love his (and counterparts') early talks on ZFS, but yeah, I've found that pretty much any talk by him is packed with interesting info, but you may have to watch it at .5x speed (even if you're a native english speaker).

His talks on dtrace, ZFS, containers, are all very interesting (most on YouTube).

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?

#138

Post by ArchTypical »

hguhghuff wrote: post #16

YouTube is absolutely packed with technical channels on any software / computing topic that interests you.

...and youtube doesn't have everything.

e.g. What we actually know about Software Development and why we know it's true.

https://vimeo.com/9270320

Seriously, what was the point of your comment?

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?

#139

Post by gmiller123456 »

mlevental wrote: post #102
otras wrote: post #100

Although not strictly a talk, I would highly recommend the first of the SICP lectures[0], if only to expand your thinking about what computer science: "I'd like to welcome you to this course on Computer Science. Actually that's a terrible way to start. Computer science is a terrible name for this business. First of all, it's not a science. It might be engineering or it might be art. We'll actually see that computer s…

can someone please convince me that the use of the word "magic" is justified? yes I know sicp is universally exalted in the cs/programming community and even though I haven't read it yet I support the principle of a principled approach to computation (it's math after all in the purest sense) but I can't support the infantilism of words like magic and the wizard on the cover of the book because the two themes are dire…

Maybe it's just me (I haven't actually read the book), but I don't see the guy on the cover as a wizard. He's holding a pair of dividers which I associate much more with a craftsman or study of geometry. I just assumed the clothing was a style I didn't understand.

Re: Ask HN: What are some of the best technical talks you've heard?

#140

Post by gumby »

Richard Hamming (as in Hamming codes, Bell labs etc): "You and Your Research". This had a profound effect on me at 18 when I heard him present it (it was by then a "set piece" talk) and it still holds valuable advice for me now.

In general his published talks have all been good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw or just read it at https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~dahlin/bookshelf/hamming.html

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