HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

One of my favorite talks by Joe Armstrong -- computer science, a guide for the perplexed. He talks through what he feels are some important but forgotten ideas in CS

https://youtu.be/rmueBVrLKcY

⬐ andredz

Thank you. This was great.

⬐ macintux

Thank you, I hadn’t seen this. I miss him dearly.

Joe Amstrong had a related talk 'A Guide for the Perplexed'[0] last year. He mentioned several 'forgotten great ideas' such as Linda Tuple Spaces, Flow-based programming, Xanadu and Unix pipes.

[0] https://youtu.be/rmueBVrLKcY?t=1949

⬐ decebalus1

Hah.. My BSc thesis (>15 yrs ago) was around Linda Tuple Spaces... Good times.

This is devastating, RIP.

I watched this talk a few months ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmueBVrLKcY called "Computer Science - A Guide for the Perplexed"

It was superb, I think it's unfortunate that he had to rush through it because of time constraints, his anecdotes and delivery were really engaging and funny.

That is so sad, he was in his late 60s and it seemed like he had a lot of life left in him, talking about how software can get better and having a great (and sometimes snarky) outlook on the profession.

Highly recommend his thesis (2003) and a few of his great interviews/presentations for anyone who isn’t familiar with Joe, it captures a lot of what he thought about and pushed for in his professional life.

http://erlang.org/download/armstrong_thesis_2003.pdf https://youtu.be/fhOHn9TClXY https://youtu.be/lKXe3HUG2l4 https://youtu.be/rmueBVrLKcY

I hope his family and friends can find some comfort in how much he was appreciated and admired in the development community.

⬐ nextos

I came here to say the same thing. His thesis is extremely readable and illuminating on the topic of reliable distributed systems.

⬐ jacquesm

It goes much further than that, it shows how to tackle reliability even in systems that are not distributed. The primary insight is that all software will be buggy so you need to bake reliability in from day one by assuming your work product will contain faults.

⬐ nextos

Yes, I know. Erlang was not distributed till 1991, roughly 5 years after it was born.

It's also really illuminating how they implemented the first versions of Erlang as a reified Prolog [1]. But that is not explained in the thesis, just in his 1992 paper which he briefly cites.

[1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=F4...

⬐ pklee

I came in thinking.. god it better not be him.. it better not be him.. so sad to hear this.. I loved his book on erlang. Just an amazing mind

⬐ masklinn

> That is so sad, he seemed like he had a lot of life left in him talking about how software can get better and having a great (and sometimes snarky) outlook on the profession.

I'm in actual shock, he was tweeting about pretty much that (also brexit and playing with his phone's voice recognition) just 2 weeks ago… He wasn't even 70…

⬐ pera

Yeah me too, he was also very active in the Elixir forum. RIP

⬐ mercer

He was even made admin just over a week ago :-/.

https://elixirforum.com/t/introducing-our-new-moderators-and...