hackertube.io

Bret Victor The Future of Programming

Joey Reid · talk · Watch on YouTube

History of computingGUI, HCI & interface historySoftware practice, open source & careers

What it is

Bret Victor's DBX 2013 talk, delivered in the guise of a 1973 IBM engineer with an overhead projector. It surveys forgotten ideas from 1960s and early 70s computing and warns against assuming you know what you're doing.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN treats it as a classic, near-mandatory talk on how programming tools and paradigms stagnated and which older ideas deserve revival.

  • 12 people recommended it
  • 11 different months
  • 5 strong recommendations
  • first 2017, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “Bret Victor is amazing.”

    Talk that made the commenter follow Bret Victor.

    itsyogesh, 2017-01 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: Which developers do you closely follow?”

  2. “Take a look and you will be amazed of how good (or revolutionary by our standards) some old technologies were.”

    Shows how good and revolutionary some old technologies were.

    diegojromero, 2018-08 · Strong recommendation · in “Ask HN: What is the future of programming?”

  3. “I recommend everyone watch Bret Victor's classic "The Future of Programming”

    Classic talk on how programming has stagnated.

    corysama, 2021-01 · Strong recommendation · in “The Great Software Stagnation”

  4. “Bret Victor's, "The Future of Programming" is illuminating.”

    Walks through how the concept of programming evolved in small leaps.

    thangalin, 2021-01 · Strong recommendation · in “Why can't I write code inside my browser?”

  5. “If you haven't yet seen this video, please do”

    Insight into how Bret Victor thinks; a great talk.

    ulkesh, 2023-07 · Strong recommendation · in “Bret Victor: Update July 2023”

  6. “For a brief history of this, watch "The Future of Programming" talk by Bret Victor”

    Brief history of programmers' poor progress in tooling.

    namuol, 2018-04 · Recommendation · in “You Can’t Do Data Science in a GUI”

  7. “which goes over some groundbreaking paradigms that have since become mostly forgotten.”

    Covers groundbreaking paradigms that have since become mostly forgotten.

    veli_joza, 2018-06 · Recommendation · in “Programming Paradigms and Beyond [pdf]”

  8. “Performance piece set in 1973 about computing history.”

    DeBraid, 2020-04 · Recommendation · in “Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: bret victor, programming paradigms, computing history, tooling, software stagnation

Also recommended by the same people