Required Viewing: Tech Talks

Thursday, December 16, 2021

I recommend these tech talks to everyone I know in software. They've been deeply influential in my engineering practices, and I think about them often when I'm working to write high-quality code.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to these talks – I couldn't do it without you.

Rich Hickey: Simple Made Easy

How do we build systems that are ergonomic to work with without producing systems bloated with complexity?

Simple Made Easy
Rich Hickey emphasizes simplicity’s virtues over easiness’, showing that while many choose easiness they may end up with complexity, and the better way is to choose easiness along the simplicity path.

Richard Feldman: Making Impossible States Impossible

Your language's type system is a powerful tool. Learn how to leverage it to reduce the number of runtime errors in your software by encoding your domain problem into compiler-checked types.

Brie Bunge: Adopting TypeScript at Scale

Learn how Airbnb migrated from JavaScript to TypeScript. My favorite fact from this video: 38% of Airbnb production incidents could have been prevented with TypeScript's compile-time validation.

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