My Love Letter To Computer Science Is Very Short And I Also Forgot To Mail It

James Mickens delivers a satirical keynote on bad tech ideas, venture capitalists, and the absurdities of the modern software industry.

James Mickens: Keynote Speech O'Reilly Velocity Conference 2019 (Berlin, Germany) Abstract: In this presentation, I explain the signs that a tech idea is bad. The primary indication is that the idea involves technology or is liked by someone who likes technology. After encouraging all venture capitalists to return their equity to Satan (the ultimate source of their power), I will awkwardly admit that the equity should have been cast into a black hole instead of being concentrated in the hands of a single demon lord. The audience will agree that hindsight is 20/20, and I will keep my generous severance package. There will be a lemonade break to allow any overpaid software engineers to drive up housing costs in their local neighborhoods. I will probably run out of lemonade because my ML model for predicting lemonade demand doesn’t actually encode any fundamental insights about the lemonade market. At the after-party, there will be a contest to see who can pretend to like Rust the most. Everyone will be a winner.