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

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4.4K subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

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  • Recommended by 5 people: 3 on Hacker News, 1 on Lobsters and 1 curated list.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2016 to 2022.
  • Presented by Thomas Figg
  • Linked in the descriptiontef/emfcamp2012
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

1.7M views13 years ago5 recommendations

Tools and practiceCareers and interviewsCode review and teamworkDeveloper productivityThe tech industry

Thomas Figg delivers a humorous and cynical look at the realities, frustrations, and lessons learned from a career in software development.

programmingisterrible.com/ mastodon.social/@tef A bad programmer talks about bad programming, from EMF 2012 (twitter.com/emfcamp/) Slides (PDF) — github.com/tef/emfcamp2012/raw/master/programming_is_terribl… Slides (keynote format) — github.com/tef/emfcamp2012/blob/master/programming_is_terrib… Draft script — github.com/tef/emfcamp2012/blob/master/programming_is_terrib…

Why it's here

5 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as an entertaining, honest, and classic talk about the systemic dysfunctions of software engineering.

hire_chartson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Rich Hickey Fanclub”

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. link to this 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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programming-talkscurated list on GitHubRecommends

Under “Software Development”

Programming is terrible - Lessons learned from a life wasted 01:06:44 by **Thomas Figg** (2013)
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inactive-useron Lobsters • Recommends

Programming is terrible—Lessons learned from a life wasted (2012)
4View on Lobsters

jppopeon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What are the things keep in mind while giving/preparing for a tech talk?”

…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 * link to this video * link * link…
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iwwron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Inspiring hacker talks and presentations?”

Rich Hickey - Hammock-driven development: link Brett Victor - Inventing on principle: link Programming is terrible: link to this 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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cremnoon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Programming is terrible – Lessons learned from a life wasted (2013) [video]”

Just the slides do. Maybe he later thought the same and then omitted or replaced that suggestion in his talk. link to this video
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edddon Hacker News • Mentions

On “I Open-Sourced All My Business Ideas”

I don't mean to troll, but having ideas is nothing. Of course projects start with ideas but if the creator of the idea didn't pursue given concept - neither should you. link to this video
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vanderZwanon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Godot Engine – A decade in retrospective and future”

I think it's a rehash (conscious or not) of Thomas Figg's famous "Webapps, or as I like to call them: Skins around databases." -joke that he used in his "Programming is terrible—Lessons learned from a life wasted" talk from many years ago. It's no longer completely true, but honestly it's still kind of true. And I've been making my living writing them for years now ;) 0 link to this video
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u/manvscodein r/C_Programming • Mentions

On “C Style: my favorite C programming practices”

You should watch this video. link to this video I think you might take something away.
1View on Reddit