--- title: some software talks i like | daily.dev description: A curated personal list of software talks focused on the craft of programming rather than specific technologies. Highlights include Rich Hickey's 'Simple Made... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/some-software-talks-i-like-cjsrtjsuv twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: some software talks i like | daily.dev og:description: A curated personal list of software talks focused on the craft of programming rather than specific technologies. Highlights include Rich Hickey's 'Simple Made... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/some-software-talks-i-like-cjsrtjsuv og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/CJSRtJSuV.png og:image:alt: some software talks i like og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # some software talks i like **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 6 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A curated personal list of software talks focused on the craft of programming rather than specific technologies. Highlights include Rich Hickey's 'Simple Made Easy' on complexity and entanglement, Bryan Cantrill's taxonomy of systems along simple/complex and engineered/emergent axes, Allison Parrish's reframing of abstraction as deliberate forgetting, Steve Klabnik on AI-driven labor anxiety paralleled with Pittsburgh's steel industry decline, Andrew Kelley's hopeful take on technologists' role, Mike Acton on solving real problems with full context rather than abstractions, Will Wilson on swarm testing, and Tyler Neely on throwing away code you can't finish in a day to control complexity. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is Bryan Cantrill's taxonomy of systems from his complexity talk? Cantrill proposes a two-axis framework: simple-to-complex on one axis and engineered-to-emergent on the other. This produces four quadrants: 'constructed' (complex, engineered), 'rebellious' (simple, emergent), 'accreted' (complex, emergent), and 'revolutionary' (simple, engineered). The framework is intended as a lens for evaluating dependencies, rival systems, and the systems you admire. _Engineers reasoning about system architecture and dependencies discuss frameworks like this on daily.dev._ ### What does Rich Hickey mean by 'complect' in Simple Made Easy? Hickey uses 'complect' — an archaic word meaning to interleave, entwine, or braid — to describe the act of entangling concepts that should remain independent. He grounds the distinction in etymology: 'simple' derives from 'sim-plex' (one fold/weave), while 'complex' comes from 'com-plex' (woven together). Complexity arises from complecting, and incidental complexity arises when independent concepts are unnecessarily entangled. _Developers working through software design decisions find discussions like this on daily.dev._ ### What is Tyler Neely's 'throwing it all away' approach to managing software complexity? Neely advocates throwing away any code you cannot finish in a single day, restarting from scratch each morning. This brute-force constraint creates a hard ceiling on unbounded complexity growth, forces implementations to fit entirely in your head, and naturally surfaces reusable components — the ones you find yourself rebuilding repeatedly across sessions. _Developers exploring unconventional approaches to keeping codebases manageable share experiences like this on daily.dev._ ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 13 comments across lobsters (as of 2026-09-13). **TL;DR:** Commenters warmly received the post as a prompt to share their own favourite talks, contributing a rich secondary list of recommendations; the thread is largely collegial and additive rather than critical. **Sentiment:** 75% positive · 20% mixed · 5% skeptical **The case for** - The post inspired others to surface lesser-known but highly regarded talks (e.g. Guy Steele's 'Growing a Language', Bret Victor's work, the Voyager 1 debugging talk). - Commenters appreciated the curation angle and expressed interest in more people publishing similar personal watchlists. **The pushback** - Jonathan Blow's inclusion in a related list drew mild pushback over his political commentary and scaremongering framing. **By community** - lobsters (positive): Mostly an enthusiastic pile-on of additional talk recommendations, with only minor friction around one speaker's off-topic views. **Open questions** - Are there good YouTube channels dedicated to programming craft worth following regularly? - Should more developers publish personal 'watchroll'-style curated talk lists? **Highlights** > My all time favorite is Guy Steele's [Growing a Language](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw6TaiXzHAE). My tastes in languages have drifted away somewhat: I'd rather simplicity and fast build times than a highly expressive generics. But I love this talk just as much as I ever did. > — [davidbalbert on lobsters · 2 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/cmrfrj/some_software_talks_i_like#c_09fmkk) > Somewhat different energy, but I think my favorite software talk is [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcUycQoz0zg), which goes through the details of debugging and fixing the Voyager 1 probe years and years after its launch. I struggle to fully explain it, but it gets me emotional thinking about it. There's something deeply heartening about this small team of experts doing their absolute best, with seemingly every possible obstacle thrown in their way, and (spoilers?) working out a fix. > — [jdh on lobsters · 1 points](https://lobste.rs/s/cmrfrj/some_software_talks_i_like#c_iussyj) > 😲 Ideas are in the air I just recently published an almost identical post with some of the same videos. https://gcollazo.com/watchroll Great selection, there's some I didn't know, thanks. It would be so cool if more people did this in a similar way. PD: also trying to make /watchroll happen 😜 > — [gcollazo on lobsters · 2 points](https://lobste.rs/s/cmrfrj/some_software_talks_i_like#c_vtjsse) **Source threads** - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/cmrfrj/some_software_talks_i_like) · 55 points · 13 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [10 software essays that changed how I think](https://daily.dev/posts/10-software-essays-that-changed-how-i-think-1oupouzai) · Tech World With Milan · 72 upvotes · 4 comments --- Tags: [#general-programming](https://daily.dev/tags/general-programming), [#testing](https://daily.dev/tags/testing) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/some-software-talks-i-like-cjsrtjsuv) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"some software talks i like","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/some-software-talks-i-like-cjsrtjsuv","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/some-software-talks-i-like-cjsrtjsuv"},"datePublished":"2026-08-08T16:56:40.277Z","dateModified":"2026-09-13T20:33:19.576Z","description":"A curated personal list of software talks focused on the craft of programming rather than specific technologies. 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