Best Talks and Podcasts I know
February 25, 2024

Some talks, that I think every software developer should watch.

Simple made easy

If you watch only one talk from this list, it should be this one. There are so many wise truths to software development, that have been holding up the past 12 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxdOUGdseq4

A Talk Near the Future of Python (a.k.a., Dave live-codes a WebAssembly Interpreter)

Have you heard about WebAssembly yet? This talk is not only illustrating what it is but implements the absolute basics in an educational way. Also, it is a master class in giving a talk, that keeps you at the edge of your seat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-A78RgMhZU

Performance matters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TLSBdHe1A

The life of a file

Files and functions should be short right? They should only span a few lines of code, so that everything is understandable, clean and so on. But they don’t have to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpDsk374LDE

Functional Design Patterns

Gang of four patterns are used extensively in OOP, what are the patterns in functional programming?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srQt1NAHYC0

Maybe Not

I don’t know how to summarize this briefly. I believe it is a talk about evolving systems, libraries and working with information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5WdGrpoug

Growing a language

One of my favorite talks in which Guy Steele talks about language design with a fun twist.

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

Traue keinem Scan, den du nicht selbst gefälscht hast

A brilliant talk about the lessons learned from finding a severe bug in Xerox scanners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FeqF1-Z1g0

Software unscripted

Software unscripted has become one of my favorite podcasts. Richard Feldman (author of Roc programming language) hosts this podcast and talks about language development and web development and functional programming and all the things, it’s great.

If you want to dip your toes in, listen to the episode with Casey Muratori and the one with Greg Wilson.

Jon Gjengset

If you are interested in Rust, just watch some of Jons videos on YouTube, he is amazing at explaining difficult technical things in depth.