matthiasn/talk-transcripts on Hacker News

…but it's hard to imagine it. The biggest bottleneck for me has always been hammock time[1]. 1. https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by kelseyfrog · 2026-08-27 · in Six months of writing code exclusively with agents

…like is Hickey's hierarchy of the problems of programming and their relative costs, from slide 22: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... If you have inherent domain complexity, or a misconception on how to apply…

comment by Jach · 2026-04-14 · in Write less code, be more responsible

…He's a big user of a (to me) peculiar variant of the phrase, "it ends up": a total of 144 times in https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts It also struck me as a bit of a sleight of hand - but maybe it's just rhetorical flourish. Or…

comment by loevborg · 2026-03-04 · in “It turns out” (2010)

…software is Hammock Driven Development . It's time to use our brains more, in quiet reflection. https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... 996 sounds like garbage on its own, as a system of toil. But I also very much…

comment by jauntywundrkind · 2026-02-16 · in "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

…more to sift through. [1]: https://bigthink.com/series/explain-it-like-im-smart/mimetic... [2]: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... [3]: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/303819/what-do-t... [4]:…

comment by xpe · 2025-12-16 · in Thin desires are eating life

Hammock-driven Development https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... Default mode network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_mode_network

comment by cja · 2025-05-28 · in As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook

"Simple Made Easy" is pretty popular, there is a transcription with slides: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by spicybbq · 2025-04-11 · in Why I Program in Lisp

…period of time, and I am tired of trying to get right, because it is simply far too difficult. ( https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... )

comment by nocman · 2024-12-13 · in What every systems programmer should know about concurrency (2020) [pdf]

…And what a business wants hurts the quality & doesn't permit ideal outcomes to emerge & surface. https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... And the human factors are that dwell and pondering are essential for creative…

comment by jauntywundrkind · 2024-07-24 · in Software engineers are not (and should not be) technicians

…Jr. (Strange Loop 2010) https://www.youtube.com/live/dPK6t7echuA?app=desktop&t=1747s transcript https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/St... thanks matthiasn! Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21056…

comment by sitkack · 2024-07-07 · in Synchronization Is Bad for Scale

…Sit back and reflect; consider what we are doing, how it's going. Reconsider the possibilities. https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... Now, if work wants to pay me to spend 2/3rds my time just reflecting &…

comment by jauntywundrkind · 2024-07-03 · in Your Company's Problem is Hiding in Plain Sight - High Work-In-Progress (WIP)

…like them anyway if you switched Lisp out. An underrated Hickey talk is his Effective Programs one: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... It's another entry in my personal (and useless time-wasting) fascination…

comment by Jach · 2024-06-05 · in Ask HN: 30y After 'On Lisp', PAIP etc., Is Lisp Still "Beating the Averages"?

…development [1] > the background mind is good at synthesizing things. It's good about strategy [1] https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by malingo · 2024-05-04 · in In Praise of Idleness (1932)

https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by indigo0086 · 2024-04-22 · in Ask HN: Outstanding Programmers

Thank you for this recommendation. I've never heard of it before and now I'm reading: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... It's giving me energy this Monday holiday(USA)!

comment by apsurd · 2024-01-15 · in Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (1998)

…things together unnecessarily. Don't complect, compose, etc as in the famous Rich Hickey talk ( https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... ).

comment by fulafel · 2023-12-06 · in Why is Jepsen written in Clojure?

…that problem, right? We just fire the starting pistol every hundred yards and call it a new sprint. https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by wetmore · 2023-10-12 · in Can't be fucked: Underrated cause of tech debt

…that problem, right? We just fire the starting pistol every hundred yards and call it a new sprint. https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by liveoneggs · 2023-10-12 · in Can't be fucked: Underrated cause of tech debt

…inexpensive. [0] Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V1FtfBDsLU [1] Slides and transcript: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... [2] Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YR5WdGrpoug [3] Slides and transcript…

comment by ndr · 2023-10-04 · in Strong static typing, a hill I'm willing to die on

…what it should be about. Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V1FtfBDsLU Slides and transcript: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by ndr · 2023-10-04 · in Puzzle Languages (2009)

…are _probably_ forgetting a ton of it every day. Stop forgetting things! Use history tables. cf. https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... Do not use Papertrail or similar application-space history tracking…

comment by slotrans · 2023-09-22 · in Ways to capture changes in Postgres

…Polya several times in his classic talk "Hammock Driven Development". Here's a transcript: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... I've long been impressed by Hickey's problem solving skills, so I took much of this…

comment by markc · 2023-08-23 · in How to Solve It (1945)

…that don't make any sound at all. Until you get it right, there's nothing. “ [Audience laughter]” https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... If something can be made easier without undermining its integrity, great. Not…

comment by eduction · 2023-07-23 · in Interfaces all the way down

…The full video: [Time 0:49:06] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSdnJDO-xdg Transcript here: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by janosos · 2023-04-27 · in Datomic is Free

…ties these together such that value is always time-dependent - and the complexity that results. https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by jsty · 2023-02-07 · in All programming philosophies are about state

…the language isn't purely functional (JS/TS). [1]: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/18043058 [2]: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... [3]: https://fjolt.com/article/javascript-records-and-tuples

comment by Leftium · 2023-01-17 · in Ask HN: How has functional programming influenced your thinking?

The value of values: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... Having values and having your program phrased as transformations of values makes for straight forward, easily tested code. Provide inputs, assert outputs.

comment by carry_bit · 2023-01-16 · in Ask HN: How has functional programming influenced your thinking?

…I’d done it properly, by the time I’m done). Reminds me of Rich Hickey’s Hammock Driven Development https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by eduction · 2022-10-06 · in Kim Jung Gi has died

…table stakes for typed systems, and yet he doesn’t seem to think it’s valuable or feasible, https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... It does make me sad every time I have to deal with macro systems in non Lisp…

comment by xmcqdpt2 · 2022-10-05 · in Building a Startup on Clojure

…balls do you want to be incidental complexity and how many do you want to be problem complexity?” https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by eduction · 2022-08-31 · in Cognitive loads in programming

https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by tosh · 2022-01-25 · in Hammock Driven Development (2010)

…have discovered [Hammock-Driven Development]( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc )! (also https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... )

comment by lambdaba · 2022-01-09 · in I feel dumb(er) when typing, and smart(er) when writing

…"flat" "just data" representations directly. From https://youtu.be/VSdnJDO-xdg?t=3000 (transcript: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... ): Example - HttpServletRequest getAsyncContext, getAttribute,…

comment by Jach · 2021-12-20 · in Everything I googled in a week as a professional software engineer (2019)

There's also transcripts of this and other Rich Hickey talks available: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by fulafel · 2021-11-26 · in Abstract Clojure

…programming" that ties in with its immutable-by-default data structures. A good talk is https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... The second is more specific. In Clojure, symbols are just names. When the compiler…

comment by Jach · 2021-11-03 · in Differences with other Lisps

…Donald G. Reinertsen 3) Step Away from the Computer or Hammock Driven Development, Rich Hi ckey https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by knightofmars · 2021-09-08 · in Ask HN: Books that impacted your work that few other people seem to care about?

…is doing exactly what they said they would do and have been doing all along. Re-read the talk here: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... (PS, a note to Cognitect comms – maybe start here with your next blog post…

comment by dustingetz · 2021-07-20 · in Clojure builds as an amalgamation of orthogonal parts

And the transcript: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by Pet_Ant · 2021-06-28 · in Unison Programming Language

Rich Hickey had a great talk on this that introduced me to the word "complecting" ( https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... ) Relatedly, I have a simple new maths for counting complexity, so that you can compare two…

comment by breck · 2020-12-13 · in Why software ends up complex

…a library, and still are not a lot of libraries, that go between places, because of this problem. https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/ccc4a0172...

comment by ledgerdev · 2020-10-18 · in C++ still isn't cutting it

…There's this very illustrative talk explaining why breaking API changes are such a bad thing. https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by vemv · 2020-07-29 · in Stop Abusing Semver

There is a transcript here: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by dimitar · 2020-07-21 · in Essays on programming I think about a lot

I can highly recommend you watching this talk: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... It explains very well why is something being easy shouldn't be the main metric, when choosing some technology. In this case you…

comment by onetom · 2020-06-30 · in Hyperapp – A tiny framework for building web interfaces

…- Clojure+Datomic application to do code-aware queries on git repos List of talk transcripts: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/tree/master/Hi... Playlist of many talks on YT: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZdCLR02grLrE…

comment by puredanger · 2020-06-05 · in A History of Clojure [pdf]

…usual skew that paints Clojure in a good light, so take it with a grain of salt if necessary). [1] https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by adamkl · 2020-02-24 · in Developer Experience: Fundamentally harder than normal UX

…interested in the language itself. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V1FtfBDsLU Transcript: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by hden · 2020-02-22 · in Requirements volatility is the core problem of software engineering

The transcript & slides on a single page: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... Regardless of Clojure's ultimate fate as a language implementation, I suspect that the magical combination of `Epochal Time Model +…

comment by refset · 2020-01-24 · in Are We There Yet? – A deconstruction of object-oriented time (2009)

slides & transcript: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi... > So there's a sense in which improvisation is dynamic composition of prepared materials, of planned material, and that to be a great improviser means to…

comment by tosh · 2020-01-14 · in Design, Composition and Performance (2013)

Transcript for this and many other talks is available in this repository: https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by andy_fingerhut · 2019-11-17 · in Clojure: Effective Programs (Rich Hickey, 2017)

…thing. And at that point they are ruining it. At least, they are moving it away from what it is." https://github.com/matthiasn/talk-transcripts/blob/master/Hi...

comment by mapgrep · 2019-11-01 · in Linus Torvalds: Git proved I could be more than a one-hit wonder