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"The Mess We're In" by Joe Armstrong

Joe Armstrong, co-inventor of Erlang, gives a funny and opinionated Strange Loop talk on the tangled state of software: build tools, package managers, entropy and the physical limits of computation. He argues for ideas like naming things by content hash and throwing away your first version.

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Why HN readers recommended it

HN returns to it constantly as a witty, still-accurate diagnosis of why software is bloated and messy, and as a go-to recommendation in any thread on modules, package managers or software quality.

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

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel
Strange Loop Conference
Topic
software complexity
Format
talk
Level
general
HN recommenders in dataset
10
HN mentions in dataset
20
Recommendation years in dataset
2014–2025

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.

  • 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 …

    dpeck on Hacker News · 2019-04
    In Joe Armstrong has died

  • This is absolutely devastating! His talk "The Mess We're In" was one of those talks which were incredibly funny and informative at the same time. I absolutely lost it, when he told the story of the single comment his coworker put into the Erlang code.[1] …

    zaph0d_ on Hacker News · 2019-04
    In Joe Armstrong has died

  • > "The mess we're in" famous talk by joe amstrong For anyone else: [VIDEO] Fantastic watch, thanks for recommending. Sad to hear that Joe Armstrong passed away a few weeks ago.

    leonroy on Hacker News · 2019-05
    In John Carmack on QuakeWorld latency and business model (1996)

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

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