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    12 videos · 12 hr 24 min
    Playlists

    Programming history in 12 talks

    Curated by HackerTube · 12 videos · 12 hr 24 min

    A chronological walk through programming history, told mostly by the people who were there. After an overview from Uncle Bob, it moves from Colossus and Grace Hopper through BASIC, Engelbart's 1968 demo, Unix, Xerox PARC and Lisp machines, then the home computer boom, free software and the open-sourcing of Netscape. Some are talks, some are films; all are ones HN keeps recommending.

    Play all on YouTube
    1. 1
      1:18:21

      "Uncle" Bob Martin - "The Future of Programming"

      Paul Stringer's Mobile Tech · 1.8M views · 10 years ago

      The opener and map: Uncle Bob tells the whole story from 1948 to today, which one HN commenter called a fascinating introduction to how hardware and languages evolved.

    2. 2
      1:00:26

      Colossus - The Greatest Secret in the History of Computing

      The Centre for Computing History · 1M views · 6 years ago

      The start of the timeline, the wartime codebreaking machine at Bletchley Park, told with stories of the unsung engineers who built it.

    3. 3
      2:04

      Admiral Grace Hopper Explains the Nanosecond

      funbury · 163K views · 14 years ago

      Two minutes with the compiler pioneer herself, holding up a length of wire to make a nanosecond something you can see.

    4. 4
      38:13

      Birth of BASIC

      Dartmouth · 1.5M views · 12 years ago

      1964 at Dartmouth: Kemeny, Kurtz and their students invent BASIC and time-sharing, in what HN calls the definitive documentary on it.

    5. 5
      1:40:53

      The Mother of All Demos, presented by Douglas Engelbart (1968)

      Marcel · 1.2M views · 14 years ago

      1968: the mouse, hypertext, video calls and collaborative editing all shown in one sitting, which HN treats as essential viewing.

    6. 6
      1:03:51

      VCF East: Ken Thompson interviewed by Brian Kernighan

      Vintage Computer Federation · 418K views · 7 years ago

      Unix and C from the source: Ken Thompson tells Kernighan how he wrote the Unix kernel in about three weeks, plus stories even Kernighan hadn't heard.

    7. 7
      32:56

      Bret Victor The Future of Programming

      Joey Reid · 305K views · 13 years ago

      Bret Victor speaks as if it were 1973, a playful reminder of how many bold ideas from that era programming quietly dropped.

    8. 8
      2:08:02

      Alto System Project: Dan Ingalls demonstrates Smalltalk

      Computer History Museum · 36K views · 7 years ago

      Xerox PARC in action: Dan Ingalls runs Smalltalk on a restored Alto, the live programming environment that shaped personal computing.

    9. 9
      13:43

      Symbolics Lisp Machine demo Jan 2013

      Kalman Reti · 52K views · 13 years ago

      Lisp's high point, a whole computer built around the language; HN's go-to demo, and one commenter said it makes modern editors look like banging rocks together.

    10. 10
      1:24:13

      Micro Men - 720p (2009)

      gimpymoo · 461K views · 13 years ago

      The early-80s home computer boom as a comic BBC drama about Sinclair versus Acorn, the rivalry that eventually produced ARM.

    11. 11
      1:25:10

      Revolution OS

      Von Hash · 208K views · 14 years ago

      The free software story from Stallman and GNU to Torvalds and Linux, the standard documentary HN points to for the backstory.

    12. 12
      56:09

      Project Code Rush - The Beginnings of Netscape / Mozilla Documentary

      The Documentary Network · 338K views · 13 years ago

      A fitting close where the web and open source meet: Netscape engineers race to release the Mozilla source in 1998, filmed from inside the company.