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"The Mess We're In" by Joe Armstrong

Strange Loop Conference

88K subscribers • 106 videos on Hallway • Conference channel

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  • Recommended by 16 people: 10 on Hacker News, 3 on Lobsters, 1 in engineering communities and 2 curated lists.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2014 to 2024.
  • Presented by Joe Armstrong, co-inventor of Erlang
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

397K views12 years ago16 recommendations

Tools and practiceSoftware designSimplicity and complexitySoftware architectureFunctional programming

Joe Armstrong discusses the growing complexity of modern software systems, criticizing build tools and package managers while proposing simpler architectural alternatives.

Joe Armstrong is one of the inventors of Erlang. When at the Ericsson computer science lab in 1986, he was part of the team who designed and implemented the first version of Erlang. He has written several Erlang books including Programming Erlang Software for a Concurrent World. Joe has a PhD in computer science from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Why it's here

16 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as a funny, thought-provoking, and classic talk on software complexity and how to build simpler systems.

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dpeckon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Joe Armstrong has died”

That is so sad, he was in his late 60s and it seemed like he had a lot of life left in him, talking about how software can get better and having a great (and sometimes snarky) outlook on the profession. Highly recommend his thesis (2003) and a few of his great interviews/presentations for anyone who isn’t familiar with Joe, it captures a lot of what he thought about and pushed for in his professional life. link link link to this video link I hope his family and friends can find some comfort in how much he was appreciated and admired in the development community.
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zaph0d_on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Joe Armstrong has died”

This is absolutely devastating! His talk "The Mess We're In" was one of those talks which were incredibly funny and informative at the same time. I absolutely lost it, when he told the story of the single comment his coworker put into the Erlang code.1 Rest in peace! 1 link to this video
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leonroyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “John Carmack on QuakeWorld latency and business model (1996)”

> "The mess we're in" famous talk by joe amstrong For anyone else: link to this video Fantastic watch, thanks for recommending. Sad to hear that Joe Armstrong passed away a few weeks ago.
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programming-talkscurated list on GitHubRecommends

Under “Software Development”

The Mess We're In 00:45:50 by **Joe Armstrong** (2014)
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awesome-talkscurated list on GitHubRecommends

Under “Software Development”

The Mess We're In by **Joe Armstrong** (Strange Loop 2014) 45:49
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0xmohiton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: What's your favorite tech talk?”

How To Design A Good API and Why it Matters 0 The Principles of Clean Architecture 1 The State of the Art in Microservices by Adrian Cockcroft 2 "The Mess We're In" by Joe Armstrong 3 0 link 1 link 2 link 3 link to this video
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hepekon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Physical Limits of Computation (2009)”

Joe Armstrong gives a very good talk about ideas in the article in "The Mess We're In" (2014): link to this video
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toshon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Joe Armstrong has died”

Just re-watched his Strangeloop talk: “The mess we’re in”. Still so spot on. He will be dearly missed. link to this video
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camgunzon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Software Architecture Guide”

Agree, but people tend to stop at Fowler and live it as gospel. There is a profound richness in the different ways to think and talk about computers, engineering, and information science, far more wonderous than any one person can catalog. Read SICP, Knuth, Code Complete, Codd. Hell, just YouTube around. If your vocabulary is prescribed by literally one guy in a fedora, you gotta get out there. Might I suggest Joe Armstrong 1 :) 1 link to this video
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badsectoraculaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “C64 OS: make a Commodore 64 feel fast and useful”

…his sort of sentiment goes way back, e.g. Wirth's classic "Plea for lean software" article from 19951. (Joe's talk is more about the broken part and IMO he misidentifies the issue being about trying to make things fast when the real issue -that he also mentions- is that pretty much nobody knows what is really going on with the system itself) 0 link to this video 1 link…
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mhitzaon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: How do you explain the sloppiness of modern software?”

For those that enjoyed the video you linked, Joe Armstrong's "The Mess We're In" talk could be interesting as well link to this video
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mifon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Did we lose our way in making efficient software?”

Reminds me of some of the remarks Joe Armstrong made a while ago 1, and which I came across via another submission a couple of weeks ago (which escapes me). It’s a great talk about the physical limits of computers and computation. 1 link to this video
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