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Programming is terrible—Lessons learned from a life wasted. EMF2012

tef ebooks · 1.7M views · 2013-01-30 · 1:06:44

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Overview

Tef's EMF 2012 talk on lessons from a career in programming, a candid and humorous look at why programming is so often terrible. Slides and a draft script are available online.

On Hacker News

HN lists it among its favorite programming talks and fantastic technical speeches.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2015–2022

Topics

Software practice, open source & careersSoftware architecture & design
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programmingsoftware craftopinionemf campabstractions

What people said

hire_charts · 2016-02 · Strong recommendation

That and Hammock Driven Development: [LINK] Both of these talks are in my top 5. Edit (okay, here are the other 3): * All the Little Things by Sandi Metz [LINK] * Programming is terrible—Lessons learned from a life wasted. [VIDEO] * Some talk I saw by Dan McKinley on making Data-Driven decisions. I can't find the original video, but here's a really similar one: [LINK]

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iwwr · 2022-02 · Recommendation

Rich Hickey - Hammock-driven development: [LINK] Brett Victor - Inventing on principle: [LINK] Programming is terrible: [VIDEO] Dave Beazely - Python concurrency from the ground up (applicable to languages in general, with generator and corourine functionality) [LINK] Functional programming, with birds: [LINK] Short and classic: Wat [LINK]

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jppope · 2018-07 · Recommendation

1) Do not attempt to live code. change your code via version control, build small videos, copy and paste... whatever you do... do not try and live code 2) Read "The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs" ... its not really about Steve Jobs so much as its about how to be a great presenter. 3) building or writing a talk is significantly less important than the delivery... which means that more of your time should be spent on how to deliver the speech (recording I find is the best way to practice) 4) Pick a single thing and do it well, do not attempt to put too much into a talk or tackle something massively complex. 5) Make sure that everyone is walking away with something they can actually use. This doesn't require it be a hard skill... "Soft" or philosophical utilities are just as good 6) Have Fun and be funny... Speakers have a tendency to want to show off the size of their intellect, and the level their competency- having a speech be entertaining is way way more important. 7) DO NOT READ FROM YOUR SLIDES. know your shit. slides are supplementary Extra Credit. Here's a collection of some fantastic technical speeches: * [LINK] * [LINK] * [LINK] * [VIDEO] * [LINK] * [LINK]

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Sources

Video by tef ebooks, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

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HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

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