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THE VIDEO SHELF · robust-first computing

Robust-first computing: Beyond efficiency

Dave Ackley gives a high-level introduction to robust-first computing, which prioritizes robustness over efficiency in computer architecture. A sorting demo illustrates the idea.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN recommends it as a short, clear explanation of robust-first computing by its originator, and as a philosophy relevant to building with unreliable components like LLMs.

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

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
Dave Ackley
Topic
robust-first computing
Format
talk
Level
intermediate
HN recommenders in dataset
3
HN mentions in dataset
4
Recommendation years in dataset
2015–2025

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.

  • Me to, and I'm always battling with the LLM's obsession with lazily writing reams of ridiculously defensive code and masking errors in the code it generates and calls, instead of finding the root cause and solving that. (Yes, I'm referring to the code LLMs generate, …

    DonHopkins on Hacker News · 2025-07
    In LLMs bring new nature of abstraction – up and sideways

  • I am happy you don't agree on modularity. I don't want to be correct, I want to arrive at correct conclusions. :) Composition is great, scale free self similarity is probably the basis for the universe. Modularity is a great design technique, it can also …

    sitkack on Hacker News · 2020-01
    In Which Machines Do Computer Architects Admire? (2013)

  • You might be interested in 'Robust First Computing' - [LINK] edit: here is a far better explanation by the terms creator: [VIDEO]

    nelsonmandela on Hacker News · 2021-01
    In If memristors act like neurons, put them in neural networks

Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.

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