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Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

thechangelog.com

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Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#11

Post by mrspeaker »

hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #7
zerr wrote: post #2

While I have much sympathy for Rich (way more than for Clojure), I find his talks to be extremely simple. He can talk hours about very basic and obvious things. Overall, at the end, I'm not getting much new from it.

What he talks about may be obvious to you, but is probably not the reality for 90% of the industry.

He also has an excellent ability to make the complex and abstract seem simple and obvious. His talks are not bullet points of "how to program good" that you're supposed to check off as you code - they're deeper-but-general ideas that are supposed to simmer and percolate.

All the smartest people I know (far smarter than me) are constantly impressed by his talks - and discussing with them often makes me realise I've missed some bigger-picture concepts.

So my conclusion (in lieu of a chat over a beer with the person to dig deeper) is to assume that superficial dismissal of his talks mostly demonstrate a superficial understanding of the content.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#12

Post by hadem »

twopoint718 wrote: post #9
twic wrote: post #8

We sometimes watch Rich Hickey's talks in the office. We always have a good conversation afterwards.

That's exactly what I've started doing at my office. We watch a talk per week and discuss it after. Rich Hickey occupies several rows of the spreadsheet!

Is your spreadsheet of talks publicly available?

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#13

Post by deliminator »

zerr wrote: post #2

While I have much sympathy for Rich (way more than for Clojure), I find his talks to be extremely simple. He can talk hours about very basic and obvious things. Overall, at the end, I'm not getting much new from it.

Although more on the motivational than in the technical side, I learned a lot from his talks. To me, the feeling after one of his talks is more akin to "it's is so obvious to me now, I should have been thinking like this all along". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#14

Post by zerr »

mrspeaker wrote: post #11
hcarvalhoalves wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What he talks about may be obvious to you, but is probably not the reality for 90% of the industry.

He also has an excellent ability to make the complex and abstract seem simple and obvious. His talks are not bullet points of "how to program good" that you're supposed to check off as you code - they're deeper-but-general ideas that are supposed to simmer and percolate. All the smartest people I know (far smarter than me) are constantly impressed by his talks - and discussing with them often makes me realise I've mi…

I think his talks [that I've watched] are more about the taste. So the fact that I mostly agree with him, i.e. have a similar taste, doesn't necessary correlate with a superficial understanding.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#15

Post by malkia »

zerr wrote: post #2

While I have much sympathy for Rich (way more than for Clojure), I find his talks to be extremely simple. He can talk hours about very basic and obvious things. Overall, at the end, I'm not getting much new from it.

It's because of him I know now the difference between simple and easy, that easy and that simple!

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#16

Post by jwr »

This is a great list, now I can refer my new programmers to a single place.

Rich is quite possibly the greatest marketing asset for the Clojure programming language. After listening to one of his talks (about concurrency) I realized that there is an extremely smart person that does a lot of thinking and makes a lot of sense, so perhaps Clojure might be worth a try. Haven't regretted it.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#17

Post by tedunangst »

mattjaynes wrote: post #3

One of my favorite quotes from Rich Hickey: "Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made out of genuinely simple parts, is going to be able to affect the greatest change with the least work. He's going to kick your ass. He's gonna spend more time simplifying things up front and in the long haul he's gonna wipe the plate with you because he'll have…

Fun nit: this is one of the times when effect is the correct word to use.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#19

Post by erichmond »

jwr wrote: post #16

This is a great list, now I can refer my new programmers to a single place. Rich is quite possibly the greatest marketing asset for the Clojure programming language. After listening to one of his talks (about concurrency) I realized that there is an extremely smart person that does a lot of thinking and makes a lot of sense, so perhaps Clojure might be worth a try. Haven't regretted it.

I took the same path. I was actually a bit skeptical at his talks initially, but once they sunk in, he's really head of the curve on this stuff.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#20

Post by mythz »

mattjaynes wrote: post #3

One of my favorite quotes from Rich Hickey: "Simplicity is hard work. But, there's a huge payoff. The person who has a genuinely simpler system - a system made out of genuinely simple parts, is going to be able to affect the greatest change with the least work. He's going to kick your ass. He's gonna spend more time simplifying things up front and in the long haul he's gonna wipe the plate with you because he'll have…

Exactly this.
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