situated programs

Rich Hickey's talk at Clojure's tenth anniversary on the kind of programs Clojure is designed for. He argues for situated programs that deal with changing requirements, and for dynamic typing and data over static types.

Tikhon Jelvis's Compose Conference talk on using the Z3 SMT solver to analyze and verify programs, including checking invariants with bounded loops. He demonstrates verifying programs in a small language by compiling them to Z3.

Jack Rusher's Strange Loop 2022 talk argues that most programming languages are still designed around punchcard-era assumptions. He makes the case for live, interactive programming environments, drawing on Lisp, Smalltalk and REPL-driven development.

Jonathan Blow's LambdaConf 2025 keynote demonstrates the Jai programming language and explains its design. It includes demos of metaprogramming and tools that visualize programs.

Rich Hickey's 2013 talk applies language-design thinking to whole systems, covering names, queues, data, failure, and the interfaces between programs. It ends with a call to action for building systems holistically.

Stuart Halloway argues that simplicity is objective, with a definition and etymology useful to programmers, rather than a subjective buzzword. He shows how this view informs Clojure's design and how to make programs simpler.

Andrew Kelley, creator of Zig, presents practical data-oriented design techniques for shrinking memory footprint and making programs cache friendly. He ends with a case study of how these ideas sped up the Zig compiler.

Richard Stallman's TEDxGeneva 2014 talk describing how nonfree programs give companies control over users and what users can do to regain control. It introduces the free software movement and the four freedoms.

Bobby Powers presents Mesh, a drop-in malloc replacement that eliminates memory fragmentation in unmodified C/C++ programs by compacting memory. The talk covers how it works despite C's fixed object addresses, and its benefits for programs like Redis.

Dan Friedman and William Byrd demonstrate miniKanren, a logic programming system for Scheme, in an unconference talk. It includes generating programs by running relations in reverse.

Photopea founder Ivan Kutskir talks about developing a free browser-based photo editor, one of the most complex JavaScript programs ever written, and the web technologies behind it.

Stuart Halloway shows how Clojure's spec library lets you build programs that are both agile and robust. He covers declarative, predicate-based specification layered on interactive REPL development.

David Christiansen gives a Strange Loop 2018 introduction to dependent types, where one language serves for both compile-time and run-time code and programs unite with proofs. It draws on his book The Little Typer.

Emery Berger's CppCon 2019 talk introducing Mesh, a drop-in malloc replacement that compacts memory in unmodified C and C++ programs. It tackles fragmentation by merging pages without changing pointers.

Trevor Paglen's 30C3 talk on photographing and documenting the secret state, including CIA flights, spy satellites and military sites, to reveal the geography of covert programs.

Edwin Brady, creator of Idris, introduces type-driven development in a dependently typed language. He shows types being written first and programs derived with interactive editing, then extends beyond simple examples to programs that interact with users and networks.

Gerald Jay Sussman speaks at Dan Friedman's 60th birthday celebration about how programming helps formulate and clarify ideas. He argues that ambiguous mathematical notation hinders understanding.

Robert Watson presents the Capsicum paper at USENIX Security 2010, describing practical capability-based sandboxing for UNIX. The paper won Best Student Paper.