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Procedural Programming: It Never Went Away — Kevlin Henney | Build Stuff

Build Stuff - #1 Software Dev Conf · 27.7K views · 2018-01-11 · 1:02:27

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Overview

Kevlin Henney argues that procedural programming never went away despite later paradigms such as OO and functional. He traces the history of structured programming and shows where procedural thinking still lives in modern code and why it matters for readability.

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HN people recommend it as a fascinating history lesson showing that the field keeps rediscovering ideas from the 1960s.

Recommended by 2 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2018–2021

Topics

Software architecture & designProgramming language design
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procedural programmingstructured programmingsoftware historycode readabilitykevlin henney

What people said

open-source-ux · 2019-01 · Strong recommendation

I strongly recommend this talk by software consultant and author Kevlin Henney called Procedural Programming: It's Back? It Never Went Away He talks a bit out Algol 68 and how influential it was on programming language design. Many language keywords we're familiar with today originated in the 50 year old language specification for Algol 68: int, bool, skip, void, struct. Here's the snippet from the talk about Algol 68 - it's brilliant: [VIDEO]

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open-source-ux · 2018-12 · Recommendation

I really liked this talk about the history of programming and how so many ideas we consider recent or modern are in fact much older than many of us realise. Watching this talk merely amplifies the feeling that the programming profession is in a perpetual loop - discarding or forgetting ideas or concepts, then re-discovering them anew. What's also striking is how rich and varied were the programming ideas that emerged from the 60s and 70s. Kevlin Henney - Procedural Programming: It's Back? It Never Went Away [VIDEO]

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open-source-ux · 2018-04 · Recommendation

If you have an interest in the history of programming methodologies, this talk is fascinating: Procedural programming: it's back? It never went away [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by Build Stuff - #1 Software Dev Conf, played through YouTube.

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

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

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