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My favorite tech talks

Oct 5, 2019

Intro

I want to share with you a list of my favorite tech talks. I can honestly say this is my hobby. Watching tech talks on YouTube. Here I've prepared list of eleven my most liked presentations. For each of them I try to describe why those are special to me and why their are worth watching. Order of titles is not particularly important.

I wanted to keep this list pretty short (around 10) therefore it's not complete. I've selected only fraction of those I really like.

"Data-Oriented Design and C++" - Mike Acton [CppCon 2014]

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc

I put this talk first because it's special for me. This talk points many programming approaches and attitudes that are close to my heart. In my past I've got to deal with developers who didn't understand the problem they were solving using software. Software they produced was very complex, over-engineered and performance was very poor. I always believed that understanding and focusing on the problem was the most important thing. Next one is to develop custom solution which is easy after the first step. Mike talks about it and many other things which are very good approaches to produce software. I'd recommend this talk to every programmer.

"From Vim muggle to wizard in ten easy steps" - Erik Falor [Openwest 2015]

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MquaityA1SM

It's my favorite talk in vim overview category. I'd recommended this presentation to anyone who wants to check out what is vim, what it does and why it's cool. Erik has prepared very good presentation. Besides presenting ten selected features of vim he also mentioned about history of text editors and vim. This talk is in form of live coding but very well prepared. There is no typos, delays and so on. The pace of presentation is rather fast but for an overview I think it's excellent. I really enjoyed listening to this talk. I think after this talk I've deep dived into vim.

"Advanced Python (or understanding Python)" - Thomas Wouters [Google 2007]

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_kZDvwofHY

This talk is from 2007. I've watched it around 2015, when I've already "know" Python and I was shocked. Despite being few years old this talk contains very detailed information about python fundamentals and its design. Till this talk I've never seen something similar regarding Python. In case when you're already experienced programmer and you're familiar with several programming languages and you want to know what is Python this is IMO best talk you can get. For beginners it might be too fast paced and a bit too advanced. I'd still recommend it to anyone but not everyone will be able to learn Python from this talk.

"Go: building on the shoulders of giants and stepping on a few toes" - Steve Francia [2018]

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX8r6zATHGU

This talks is probably my favorite Go overview kind of talk. I very appreciate history background and many well selected quotes. Presentation is well structured and examples are very carefully prepared. I've rewatched this talk many times. If you want to know why Go has been created and learn its most common characterization this talk is a very good source.

"Why C++ Sails When the Vasa Sank" - Scott Meyers [2014]

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltCgzYcpFUI

This presentation is one of less technical talk then most of Scott's talk. But I like it very much. It presents how C++ looks like and in which direction it's going. Scott Meyers is a great performer, his presentations are always well prepared. Watching this talk you can feel his enormous experience regarding C++ and the community. I'd recommend this talk specially for people who are scared of C++'s increasing complexity.

"Go Concurrency Patterns" - Rob Pike [Google I/O 2012]

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6kdp27TYZs

I've seen few Rob's talks and each one of them was well prepared and very well presented. This one I've seen in my early days of learning go and it gave me a glimpse of what concurrent programming looks like in go. It gave me extra motivation. I've done some examples and read CSP. Examples in this talk are very well selected - rather easy but precisely presenting ideas of main concepts regarding concurrency in go. If you want to see why concurrency is fun in go in about 30 minutes it's the best source IMO.

"Growing a Language" - Guy L. Steel Jr. [1998]

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahvzDzKdB0

This talk is very special because of its form. I cannot say more without spoilers but IMO the idea for this talk is great! Presentation is now over twenty years old but characteristics Guy L. Steel gave on developing programming language are mostly still accurate.

"Efficiency with Algorithms, Performance with Data Structures" - Chandler Carruth [CppCon 2014]

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHNmRkzxHWs

After university I've been learned all of fancy data structures and I really believed that those actually matters in term of performance. This was first talk I've realized that hardware matters. And also that not everything that seems better in theory is better in practice. The first time I've watched this talk I've learned a great deal and I was shocked in the same time. After that I watched every Chandler's talk and everyone was great! But I've put this one on the list because it was first and I think most inspiring.

"Rich Code for Tiny Computers: A Simple Commodore 64 Game in C++17" - Jason Turner [CppCon 2016]

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBkNBP00wJE

Very interesting talk! As title suggests in this talk Jason Turner presents how to implement "Pong" in C++17 and port it onto Commodore 64. Presentation is in form of live coding (most parts was prepared beforehand). It was a pleasure to watch how "zero overhead" in C++ looks like in action. This talk is both fun to watch and also very inspiring learning modern C++.

"Linus Torvalds on git" - Linus Torvalds [Google 2007]

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8

Git nowadays is used every in software development. This talk is presented by primary Git creator and designer - Linus Torvalds. Linus describe Git and its features, compares it to another version control management tools. During this talk you can find many interesting facts about Git which you might not heard before. I think now it's one of the classic tech talks. I'd recommend this talk also for Git users and for ones who want to start learning Git.

Summary

Those talks were for me a source of knowledge, inspiration, motivation and fun! That is the reason I wanted to share this list with you.