soft language

A 10-minute clip from a Jonathan Blow Twitch stream in which he argues that game engines do not really need separate scripting languages. He questions the value of embedded interpreters when the main language can do the job.

A one-minute clip of Steve Jobs saying Microsoft has no taste. It is vintage interview footage about design and product sensibility.

Leandro Facchinetti explains why he thinks Racket is a great language and why he stopped using it. He describes his backstory and experiences with the Racket community.

Tantacrul dissects the UX and UI of Avid's Sibelius music notation software, going through a long list of bad design choices. The review is both a comic rant and a practical lesson in interface design.

A kinetic typography animation set to Stephen Fry's spoken essay on language. Fry argues against grammar pedantry and for the way language evolves, including the verbing of nouns.

A former Microsoft SDET with 15 years on Windows gives his view on why Windows 10 updates keep shipping with bugs. He points to changes in how the company tests its software.

A 'leaked' Microsoft video shown at its 2011 MGX conference that mocks Google's Gmail and Apps to promote Office 365. It attacks Google over email scanning and privacy.

A long video essay arguing that Koko the gorilla probably could not actually use sign language. It examines the cherry-picked data and the lack of transparency behind the claims, drawing on published critiques.

An episode of jan Misali's Conlang Critic series reviewing Toki Pona, a minimalist constructed language with about a hundred words. It is a short, humorous critique of the language's design.

Dave Plummer, a retired Microsoft engineer who wrote Task Manager, responds to the claim that Windows sucks. He describes how he would fix common annoyances, in what he calls a love letter to Windows wrapped in a rant.

Tantacrul critiques the UX and UI of Steinberg's Dorico music notation software, comparing it with Sibelius and user testing it with real musicians alongside his own attempt to compose in it.

A 1996 clip of Steve Jobs saying that Microsoft lacks taste and is not a creative company.

Internet of Bugs analyzes Cognition's Devin demo frame by frame, arguing the video did not show Devin completing paid Upwork jobs as claimed, and showing what the task required versus what Devin produced.

Louis Rossmann's half-hour teardown criticism of the Microsoft Surface Laptop, arguing its soldered SSD and glued construction make it effectively unrepairable. It ties into his right-to-repair advocacy.

A short clip of Stephen Fry defending swearing as a rich and essential part of the English language and rejecting the idea that it is unnecessary.

Casey Muratori responds on-stream to a dismissive Twitter post by demonstrating how slow Visual Studio's startup and debugger watch window are, comparing it to much older software and machines. It is a long rant about software performance and bloat.

Tantacrul gives a detailed UX and UI design review of the MuseScore 3 notation software and compares it with Sibelius. It examines visual appeal, navigation and notation quality.

A follow-up review of using e-ink devices, such as Onyx Boox tablets, for productivity and as a second monitor. It covers software tips and tweaks and long-term impressions after months of use.

Linus Tech Tips compares Microsoft's Surface Pro X (SQ2) with the Apple M1 MacBook Air, focusing on how Windows on Arm and x86 emulation perform against Apple's Arm hardware. The verdict is that the Surface falls well short.

A short video built around Douglas Crockford, creator of JSON, saying JavaScript is a flawed language and that developers should eventually move on from it. It is a brief commentary clip with little technical detail.

Yannic Kilcher explains how he trained a language model on three years of 4chan's /pol/ board and let it post on the site. He evaluates how good the model was and discusses the ethics and fallout.

Linus Tech Tips explains how Windows Modern Standby causes laptops to drain battery while asleep, arguing it makes Windows laptops hard to recommend compared to MacBooks.

Tantacrul tells the story of Audacity, the widely used free audio editor, and announces his involvement in the project. It includes an interview with the original developers and a look at the software's usability.

Brian Will makes the case for procedural programming over object-oriented programming, arguing that OOP's promised encapsulation and decoupling are largely illusory. He analyzes real code examples and the problems of tying data to behavior in classes.

Austin Meyer, developer of the X-Plane flight simulator, explains how he was sued by a patent troll over a trivial claim about an app's license server. He walks through how the shell-company litigation works and why ignoring the suit makes things worse.

Brian Will follows up his earlier anti-OOP video by walking through four short code examples, including Java code in the style of Uncle Bob, to show how object-oriented design complicates simple programs. It argues that OOP hides and scatters state and adds needless indirection.

Serpentza, a Westerner living in China, describes Chinese influence efforts abroad and the cultural conflict between Shen Yun and Confucius Institutes. It is a commentary from his personal perspective.

A short clip of Casey Muratori from Handmade Hero explaining why he rejects the object-oriented mindset and how to move away from it. It is part rant, part programming philosophy.

Blender Guru's Andrew Price proposes a redesign of Blender's user interface, answering the usability problems raised in earlier parts of the series. He later noted the proposal had flaws and posted a follow-up.

A short animated excerpt of Alan Watts describing 'prickles' (rigorous, scientific types) and 'goo' (soft, spiritual types). He argues the real division is between prickly goo and gooey prickles.

A profane video review in the Your Product Sucks series that picks apart the Apple Music app on macOS Catalina and its usability problems.

A one-minute clip of Steve Ballmer explaining IBM's obsession with counting thousands of lines of code (KLOCs) as a measure of programmers. He explains why that metric is useless.

Chris Pirillo has his father try Windows 8 for the first time to see how ordinary users cope with the new interface.

A short clip of Penn and Teller arguing, in blunt and profane language, for vaccination and against anti-vaccine claims. It covers risk versus benefit and herd immunity.

Razbuten has his wife, who has never played games, try a sampling of titles and shows where she struggles. It highlights unspoken game conventions that experienced players take for granted.

Adam Savage answers viewer questions on dealing with condescending colleagues, focusing on dismissive phrases such as 'why don't you just' and 'I would have'. He explains why such language undermines the person receiving it.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on net neutrality, explaining the stakes of the FCC's push to roll back the rules and urging viewers to file comments. It is a comedic but substantive explainer.

A short clip from a 1973 NOVA episode in which Richard Feynman recalls his father teaching him that knowing the name of a bird in many languages tells you nothing about the bird.

A short, humorous critique of Helion Energy's fusion approach, framed as a response to a Real Engineering video. It covers low reactivity, neutron production, bremsstrahlung losses and diagnostics.

Louis Rossmann examines a 2012 MacBook Pro logic board that Apple refurbished for GPU failures and that failed again. He criticizes the quality of Apple's authorized repair work and argues for right to repair.