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Great Impractical Ideas in Computer Science: PowerPoint Programming

Tom Wildenhain

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YouTube
  • Recommended by 4 people: 4 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2020 to 2024.
  • Presented by Tom Wildenhain

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

2.1M views7 years ago4 recommendations

Computer scienceProgramming languagesComputation and complexityLanguage design and type systems

Tom Wildenhain demonstrates that Microsoft PowerPoint is Turing complete without using macros, building up to complex animations and fractals.

Recording of a guest lecture I gave for the Esoteric Programming Languages course at CMU. Original PowerPoint Turing Machine video: youtu.be/sdkxWqsk17c PowerPoint CPU: devpost.com/software/ppcc

Why it's here

4 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a mind-bending and hilarious lecture demonstrating how PowerPoint transitions can be used to build a Turing machine.

gregsadetskyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Best Talks of 2020?”

I would also very highly recommend you watch this talk about PowerPoint’s Turing-completeness — link to this video It’s from the same person (Tom Wildenhain) as your video, but this is an hour long, there’s an actual audience (that’s supportive and spends most of the talk in disbelief), and the end with recursive slides / fractals is an absolute mind melt. Strong recommend! :) Thanks for the suggestions/reminder!
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gnatmanon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Best tech talks you have heard in 2023?”

"Great Impractical Ideas in Computer Science: PowerPoint Programming" Tom Wildenham (2019) link to this video Really fun, kinda blew my mind. Guy got a job at Microsoft shortly after giving this talk.
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K0SM0Son Hacker News • Recommends

On “The “No Code” Delusion”

I think this drives your point with incredible wit: “On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint (SIGBOVIK)” by Tom Wildenhain1. (5 minutes video) 1: link (Nerding out should always be hilarious like that!) 2: Recording of a guest lecture he gave for the Esoteric Programming Languages course at CMU. (~1h) link to this video
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jjmarron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What's the best YouTube lecture you've seen recently?”

link to this video PowerPoint programming by Tom Wildenhain. He does not use VBA macros, just shows that PowerPoint transitions and slides are Turing Complete.
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ndiddyon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2”

Microsoft actually does a fairly good job with this. Here's a part of a talk that goes over a single feature in PowerPoint (a slide animation that morphs the contents of one slide into a different slide) and demonstrates how this feature interacts with the enormous existing PowerPoint feature set in interesting ways. link to this video It's obviously a stupid gimmicky feature but whatever team Microsoft put on it were clearly overachievers.
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