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The Art of Code - Dylan Beattie

NDC Conferences · Youtube · 46 HN points · 7 HN comments
HN Theater has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention NDC Conferences's video "The Art of Code - Dylan Beattie".
Youtube Summary
Software and technology has changed every aspect of the world we live in. At one extreme are the ‘mission critical’ applications - the code that runs our banks, our hospitals, our airports and phone networks. Then there’s the code we all use every day to browse the web, watch movies, create spreadsheets… not quite so critical, but still code that solves problems and delivers services.

But what about the code that only exists because somebody wanted to write it? Code created just to make people smile, laugh, maybe even dance? Maybe even code that does nothing at all, created just to see if it was possible?

Join Dylan Beattie - programmer, musician, and creator of the Rockstar programming language - for an entertaining look at the art of code. We’ll look at the origins of programming as an art form, from Conway's Game of Life to the 1970s demoscene and the earliest Obfuscated C competitions. We’ll talk about esoteric languages and quines - how DO you create a program that prints its own source code? We’ll look at quine relays, code golf and generative art, and we’ll explore the phenomenon of live coding as performance - from the pioneers of electronic music to modern algoraves and live coding platforms like Sonic Pi.


Check out more of our talks, courses, and conferences in the following links:
https://ndcconferences.com/
https://ndc-london.com/
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Hacker News Stories and Comments

All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this video.
In this video (where among the other things they explain huroboro), they show an example of code that prints out exactly the same output (itself) whether it's compiled/executed in c, python or ruby

https://youtu.be/6avJHaC3C2U?t=1957

This quine is discussed (among other topics) in The Art of Code[0], one of the most captivating tech talks I've ever seen.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U

Mar 22, 2022 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by yamman
One of my favourite talks has a demonstration of FizzBuzz in Sonic Pi. It still blows me away

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U - whole talk is worth a watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U#t=42m25s - timestamp

Feb 16, 2022 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by fagnerbrack
Jan 11, 2022 · 2 points, 0 comments · submitted by _mme
Any talk by Dylan Beattie[1,2] or David Beasley[3,4]. I think they are quite unique in their presentation, they tell a story.

[1] https://youtu.be/6avJHaC3C2U [2] https://youtu.be/TPS-eFmdepw [3] https://youtu.be/lyDLAutA88s [4] https://youtu.be/r-A78RgMhZU

Sep 20, 2021 · 2 points, 0 comments · submitted by fractalb
Aug 13, 2021 · 2 points, 0 comments · submitted by evo_9
Apr 17, 2021 · 2 points, 0 comments · submitted by domrdy
Jan 13, 2021 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by sabya
Jan 07, 2021 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by Techbrunch
Dec 25, 2020 · 3 points, 0 comments · submitted by doener
For me, it was Art of Code by Dylan Beattie, but mostly because that talk has the best ending[0] I have seen. Also, introduced to me a side of programming that I instinctively knew existed but never sought out.

[0]: https://youtu.be/6avJHaC3C2U?t=3366

NotPavlovsDog
An excellent presentation. I find his other presentation, the Cost of Code, more important but less entertaining. "Fix it in software" is going to be growing in magnitude and impact, as software eats the world. (Boeing Max crashes, Uber pedestrian accident, Volkswagen emissions cheating)

The presentation from 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=001SxQCEuv8

bawolff
I enjoyed his talk, but i can't help but feel like these style of talks always use the same examples: game of life, fractals, esolangs, and some sort of human-computer interactive art system (usually the last one has a lot of variety so maybe that should get a pass for this critique). I would love to see these sorts of programming as art talks with a different set of examples. Not that i don't love fractals and the Game of life, but there's got to be other stuff too.
alpaca128
If you liked the Game of Life running a Game of Life simulation you might enjoy the YT video[0] showing someone's functioning raycasting engine within the game world of Factorio using thousands of machines and parts provided by the game. It blew my mind.

What I also found quite amusing was the PowerPoint presentation demonstrating the Turing-completeness of PowerPoint animations[1].

I'll never get tired of this kind of tinkering walking the line between genius and a healthy portion of crazy.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28UzqVz1r24

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNjxe8ShM-8

gregsadetsky
I would also very highly recommend you watch this talk about PowerPoint’s Turing-completeness — https://youtu.be/_3loq22TxSc

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!

fouronnes3
That's an idea for a talk. Crazy place where people have implemented computers. My personal favorite is the pokemon red implementation in minecraft.

https://youtu.be/H-U96W89Z90

h43k3r
If you have a bit of interest in programming, math and art, this is 1 hour of pure joy. Thanks for this
r34
Funny, because I've seen just one talk in 2020 and it was that one :) I'm not too much into talks and conference stuff, mostly because almost all the time I find the subjects of talks completely irrelevant, to specific, too general etc. That one was really entertaining and I was looking for something similar, but haven't found anything.
flobosg
Such a great talk. The storytelling here is top-notch. I’m glad you reminded me of it.
dgb23
I second that! It's such a great talk because it showcases some powerful concepts while being very entertaining.

That's one of these talks you can watch with an interested layman as well, which I very much enjoy and find valuable.

akritrime
Yep. That's another thing that I really liked about the talk too. Its very approachable and shows how fun programming can be, especially since coding can appear a bit dry and mechanical to others.
bluepoint
I no longer know what a programming language is. I am confused.
aszen
Thanks for the suggestion, thoroughly enjoyed watching it
tisker
As an ex mathematician, I can't handle the part where he claims mathematicians have only been studying imaginary numbers "in recent decades" and then goes on to say that Mandelbrot is the first person to rigorously study these kinds of systems. Made me die inside.
hilbertseries
Cauchy rolling over in his grave.
mkl
And the whole "mathematicians are only interested in problems they can solve" bit. Mathematicians have been interested in unsolved problems as long as maths has existed!

Edit: Okay, now I've watched the whole talk. Overall it's great.

TheUndead96
Gödel has entered the chat
Dec 18, 2020 · 2 points, 0 comments · submitted by vanburen
Dec 13, 2020 · 2 points, 0 comments · submitted by mcp_
Dec 11, 2020 · 5 points, 0 comments · submitted by alexellisuk
Nov 19, 2020 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by terse_malvolio
Nov 09, 2020 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by the_dripper
Nov 07, 2020 · 2 points, 0 comments · submitted by joubert
Oct 27, 2020 · 2 points, 0 comments · submitted by bane
Jun 26, 2020 · 3 points, 0 comments · submitted by thereyougo
Jun 19, 2020 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by juancampa
I watched this video recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avJHaC3C2U - and it's one of the best programming related ones I've seen in recent times. Really well presented as well - and he talks about various Quines - I won't spoil it for anyone.
Apr 22, 2020 · 1 points, 0 comments · submitted by jattias96
Apr 01, 2020 · 6 points, 0 comments · submitted by tartoran
Mar 28, 2020 · 2 points, 0 comments · submitted by olvy0
Mar 16, 2020 · 3 points, 0 comments · submitted by ____Sash---701_
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