RedMonk Tech Events
6 HN recommenders · recommended in 13 months, 2016–2026
48:00 · 41K views · Nov 18, 2016
Bryan Cantrill's Monktoberfest 2016 talk on how software engineers pass knowledge down through oral tradition, from folk rhymes to programmer lore and stories like why C lacks a logical XOR. He argues for writing software with future generations in mind.
HN recommends it as an entertaining, well-delivered talk full of stories that shows the value of historical context and long comments in code.
13 comments from Hacker News
I’m surprised I haven’t seen this linked yet, but Bryan Cantrill of dtrace, Sun, lawnmower, Joyent, etc, fame gave an amazing talk for Monktoberfest 2016, titled “Oral Tradition in Software Engineering”, which features The Story of Mel [1]. Highly recommend checking it out — there are loads of little gems and stories like this throughout. All of his other presentations are great too and definitely worth a listen if you like this sort of thing [2]. A couple of my favorites are “Fork Yeah! The Rise and Development of Illumos” [3] and “Debugging Under Fire: Keep your Head when Systems have Lost their Mind” [4]. [1]: this video [2]: [LINK] [3]: [LINK] [4]: [LINK]
Oral Tradition in Software Engineering[1] by Bryan Cantrill really helped me appreciate that long comments in code can be a treasured part of a software space. I started my career in a pretty low-comment Ruby codebase, but now count myself as a person partial to adding lengthy 'why not how' commentary in programs. 1. this video
One of my favorite XOR stories is from Bryan Cantrill (of Oxide, Joyent, and Sun) in this presentation [0] and this video [1]. To avoid clicking a link: When he was at Sun, he was chatting with a coworker (Roger Faulkner) about the lack of logical XOR in C. Faulkner said it was because you couldn't short circuit it, and Brian thought that was wild. Then Roger emailed Dennis Ritchie to ask and he confirmed it was what Faulkner had said. That stories gets me every time! First of all, it's very funny and well delivered by Cantrill, but it's also just so incredible that they could ask the man himself. [0] [LINK] [1] this video
You may be interested in this 2016 talk about oral history in software engineering: this video To oversimplify: we should write more interesting and historical comments in our codebases, write more blog posts and give more talks, and share more links to blog posts and talks other people have created.
I love historical pieces about technology. There's so much new and shiny all the time in tech, it's nice to reflect on where we've been. Makes me want to re-watch Bryan's talk at Monktoberfest a few years ago on oral tradition in tech: this video