Monktoberfest 2016: Bryan Cantrill - Oral Tradition in Software Engineering

Why HN readers recommended it

HN recommends it as an entertaining, well-delivered talk full of stories that shows the value of historical context and long comments in code.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

RedMonk Tech Events

Topic

software engineering culture

Format

talk

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

6

HN mentions in dataset

13

Recommendation years in dataset

2016–2026

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• 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 …

• 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 …

• 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: [VIDEO]