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    Great Impractical Ideas in Computer Science: PowerPoint Programming

    Tom Wildenhain

    4 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2020–2026

    YouTube

    51:32 · 2.2M views · Oct 29, 2019

    Tom Wildenhain's guest lecture for CMU's Esoteric Programming Languages course shows that PowerPoint transitions and slides are Turing complete without macros, building up to a mind-bending fractal ending.

    Repeatedly recommended in best-talks threads as a fun, mind-blowing demonstration of unexpected computation.

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    5 comments from Hacker News

    1. @gregsadetskyDec 2020· in “Ask HN: Best Talks of 2020?”

      I would also very highly recommend you watch this talk about PowerPoint’s Turing-completeness — this video It’s from the same person (Tom Wildenhain) as your video, but this is an hour long, there’s an actual audience (that’s supportive and spends most of the talk in disbelief), and the end with recursive slides / fractals is an absolute mind melt. Strong recommend! :) Thanks for the suggestions/reminder!

      Strongly recommendsView on HN
    2. @gnatmanDec 2023· in “Ask HN: Best tech talks you have heard in 2023?”

      "Great Impractical Ideas in Computer Science: PowerPoint Programming" Tom Wildenham (2019) this video Really fun, kinda blew my mind. Guy got a job at Microsoft shortly after giving this talk.

      Strongly recommendsView on HN
    3. @K0SM0SJan 2020· in “The “No Code” Delusion”

      I think this drives your point with incredible wit: “On The Turing Completeness of PowerPoint (SIGBOVIK)” by Tom Wildenhain[1]. (5 minutes video) [1]: [LINK] (Nerding out should always be hilarious like that!) [2]: Recording of a guest lecture he gave for the Esoteric Programming Languages course at CMU. (~1h) this video

      RecommendsView on HN
    4. @jjmarrJul 2024· in “Ask HN: What's the best YouTube lecture you've seen recently?”

      this video PowerPoint programming by Tom Wildenhain. He does not use VBA macros, just shows that PowerPoint transitions and slides are Turing Complete.

      RecommendsView on HN
    5. @ndiddyMay 2026· in “Photoshop's challenges with focus, pt. 2”

      Microsoft actually does a fairly good job with this. Here's a part of a talk that goes over a single feature in PowerPoint (a slide animation that morphs the contents of one slide into a different slide) and demonstrates how this feature interacts with the enormous existing PowerPoint feature set in interesting ways. this video It's obviously a stupid gimmicky feature but whatever team Microsoft put on it were clearly overachievers.

      CitesView on HN