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Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

thechangelog.com

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Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that would be markets where the deciding factor is software. I suspect you are thinking of say windows where the quality of codebase was lesser factor than installed base etc I would suggest that web browsers is a good example - IE market share vs say Mozilla. other examples are Sage vs freeagnet ? hard to unpick market tactics and strategy from code - but it's hard to deny there is a link intuitively

My sense of what is intuitive follows his http://prog21.dadgum.com/87.html Basically code quality doesn't really matter, product vision is what matters.

[deleted]

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#52
I read the list of comments and I find disappointing too see people saying things like "he talk simple stuff", or "this is too basic, I got nothing out of it"

I love those talks, and every once in a while I watch them again so I don't forget the basic principles.

Rich went 2 step ahead than simple state what some people feels as obvious: he created a language that implements them, and he communicated those concepts.

He did something to better the trade. Have you?

This is not about the next tool to make a quick buck, or cute, but impractical, philosophical concepts

And, I too would put "Simple made easy" as the first one. Then it becomes much easier to understand why functions are the 555 chip of software development.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#53
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I could make it that way, it's still pretty small at the moment. Here's the current list:

Theraputic refactoring - Katrina Owen, The Future of Programming - Bret Victor, Simplicity matters -Rich Hickey, Hammock Driven Development - Rich Hickey, Programming with nothing - Tom Stuart, Connections: Faith in Numbers - James Burke, Growing a Language - Guy Steele, Y Not - Adventures in Functional Programming - Jim Weirich, Cool Code - Kevlin Henney, We Really Don't Know How to Compute! - Gerald Jay Sussman, Keynote: Architecture the Lost Years - Bob Martin, Computer Heuristics - Richard Feynman, The Power of Abstraction - Barbara Liskov, The Mother of All Demos - Douglas Engelbart

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#54
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.

Oh shit, I have learned a lot from Rich's talks... so your talks must be much more useful. Where can I find them? Please tell me you have some talks? You have such great ideas, or communicate such "extremely simple" ideas so well that others (or even you yourself) have recorded them for me to watch. No talks? So you keep this knowledge to yourself and shit all over a guy who shares his knowledge with a community? You…

I didn't have much of a problem with the GP's mildly dismissive comment about Hickey's talks, nor was I hugely concerned that you opened a can of worms about it. What I would, however, like to remark on how your comment forced me to think of you as a complete dumbass who has no business mingling with people who, like most of us, get paid for our ability to think logically.

In your "clever" attempt at irony, you ask your parent about his own, presumably better talks. Please take a moment to reflect on how utterly stupid this line of attack is!

Give up? OK, here's the explanation, by analogy: I'm completely incapable of building an automobile. Yet, having driven both, I'm qualified to comment that a Geo Prizm is an underpowered, shoddily constructed car - at least when compared to my Lexus. A talk is a product created for the benefit of an audience, and as the consumers of such a service, the audience - including the GP - is probably best qualified to judge it. To imply that only a producer of talks may have an opinion on a talk is shockingly stupid.

Before you attempt another such put-down, please consider how it will reflect on you, and whether it might not be more sensible to keep your mouth shut!

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#56
post #39
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the variety of English. What you said is true for the prestige dialect, certainly.

There ain't no such thing as a prestige dialect in English. In all of them, "affect change" is just plain wrong.

> There ain't no such thing as a prestige dialect in English.

I sincerely hope this is sarcasm.

> In all of them, "affect change" is just plain wrong.

Cite?

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#57
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What basis for judgements of correctness would you suggest, if not facts about how English speakers speak English?

For correctness, it should be how educated speakers speak English. In this case, I would also settle for "how published authors write English."

So... your notions of 'correctness' in a language are determined by who can get publishing deals?

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#58
post #4

Simple made easy has my vote for the #1 spot, it isn't about clojure as much as about general principles. I really love that talk.

I'll also vote Simple Made Easy above Are We There Yet. I've talked about it at length with a bunch of other programmers and get consistently better responses from starting people with Simple Made Easy.

If this is the talk I think it is, I can say it helped me greatly as a programmer. I'm one of those 'homegrown' programmers with no formal education, and I'd probably horrify some of you with my work. But I'm learning, and very aware of my deficiencies.

What I loved about this talk is that it seemed more a 'philosophy of programming' thing, where a lot of what he said applied even to my shitty programming, and (hopefully) even improved it.

Re: Rich Hickey's Greatest Hits

#60
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh shit, I have learned a lot from Rich's talks... so your talks must be much more useful. Where can I find them? Please tell me you have some talks? You have such great ideas, or communicate such "extremely simple" ideas so well that others (or even you yourself) have recorded them for me to watch. No talks? So you keep this knowledge to yourself and shit all over a guy who shares his knowledge with a community? You…

I didn't have much of a problem with the GP's mildly dismissive comment about Hickey's talks, nor was I hugely concerned that you opened a can of worms about it. What I would, however, like to remark on how your comment forced me to think of you as a complete dumbass who has no business mingling with people who, like most of us, get paid for our ability to think logically. In your "clever" attempt at irony, you ask y…

Thank you for your thoughtful reply and helpful criticism of my initial comment.
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