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Ask HN: Best tech talks you have heard in 2023?

23 points by __rito__ ↗ HN
It doesn't need to be from 2023. And it doesn't need to be strictly technical.

I have come across a great many technical talks from past HN threads [0-5]. This submission is in the spirit of those.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12637239

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16838460

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15926973

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25537230

[4]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18740939

[5]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21858866

8 comments

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mikewarot
Kevlin Henney completely changed my world view on programming, when I watched his presentation Concurrent Affairs: Procedural Programming Unlocked - NDC London 2022, earlier this year.[1]

  "when you introduce concurrency into a non-concurrent environment what you do is you change the laws of physics of your program, you change the nature of time"
This is a profound insight. It totally changed how I think about the nature of multithreaded and multiprocessor based programming.

Also from Kevlin - Refactoring to immutability[2], which showed me exactly why you would want immutable "variables". I never got the point of Rust before that. The "Borrow Checker" principle still seems nuts to me, nut at least I know there's logic behind it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi6ICEVVRiw

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APUCMSPiNh4

__rito__
For me, my favorites were:

0. "Computational Physics, Beyond the Glass" by Sam Ritchie (Strange Loop 2023) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv2JgzAl5yU - This guy created an interactive Lisp-based Physics visualizer and got started on it by reading Structure and Interpretation of Classical Mechanics. He now has a full-fledged project, and touches upon many ideas for educating people through innovative means. Really loved this video. Connected the ideas of Logo programming environment and something like a LISP-Physics visualizer.

1. "The Economics of Programming Languages" by Evan Czaplicki (Strange Loop 2023) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ3w_jec1v8 - How does creating a new programming language work really? Who are the players, and what goes behind? Very highly recommend this funny, informative talk to understand aspects of creating a programming language other than the theoretical ones.

2. Function Composition in Programming Languages - Conor Hoekstra - CppNorth 2023 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JELcdZLre3s - This is actually about array languages and Haskell and not C++. Encountered "tacit" programming for the first time, and it opened a slightly new way of thinking for me.

And others that I liked were:

0. Ruby on Rails: The Documentary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDKUEXBF3B4 - Not a Rubbyist, but still liked this documentary.

1. "Software & The Game of Go" by David Nolen (Strange Loop 2023) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2yJ3FBtU4Y

2. "Making Hard Things Easy" by Julia Evans (Strange Loop 2023) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30YWsGDr8mA - I always liked Evans' written content and zines, as they were fun to read and helped people. It was nice to see how she operates, thinks, and works- that go behind all of these.