static vs dynamic typing

Richard Feldman's GOTO Copenhagen 2022 talk on why dynamic languages like Python, Ruby, PHP and JavaScript rose in the 1990s and why each now has a popular static type checker. It argues that modern static typing recovers the advantages that made dynamic languages attractive.

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.

Polylog explains how algorithms can be turned into circuits and encoded as satisfiability problems, which lets you effectively run them backwards. It uses this to motivate breaking RSA, general reductions to SAT, and what P vs NP is really asking.

A Foresight Institute workshop video with two talks: Shawn Douglas on nanoscale instruments for visualizing small proteins, and Bret Victor on Dynamicland. Victor's part shows biomolecular design built in his Realtalk system with physical objects.

Spencer Lisenby explains dynamic soaring, a technique that lets unpowered radio-controlled gliders reach speeds above 835 kph. He covers the physics and the design, build and flying challenges.

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.

Retired Boeing Technical Fellow Doug McLean walks through common misconceptions in aerodynamics, drawing on his book Understanding Aerodynamics. He critiques popular explanations of wing lift and rocket thrust and argues for arguing from the real physics.

Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 film Solaris, in which a psychologist is sent to a space station orbiting a planet with an alien intelligence and meets his dead wife there. It is the full movie, uploaded by Mosfilm.

A Microsoft Flight Simulator Feature Discovery episode in which CEO Sebastian Wloch explains the new aerodynamics simulation for the 2020 release.

Boston Dynamics introduces Stretch, a prototype robot that moves boxes in warehouses and distribution centers. Its mobile base lets it unload trucks, build pallets and assemble orders.

Boston Dynamics shows its humanoid robot Atlas picking up and manipulating objects, and altering the obstacle course to reach its goal. The clip demonstrates locomotion, sensing and athletic manipulation.

A short clip parodying Windows Vista's cancel-or-allow security prompts, in the style of Apple's Mac vs PC ads.

An 11-minute animated introduction to P vs. NP and the wider landscape of complexity classes, inspired by the Complexity Zoo wiki. It assumes no background in computer science.

Erik Demaine's MIT 6.006 lecture introducing dynamic programming through Fibonacci numbers and shortest paths. It covers memoization, subproblems and optimal substructure.

An overview of the PTVS 2.0 beta feature for debugging Python and C/C++ together in one session in Visual Studio.

Tech Ingredients explains the principles of magnetohydrodynamics and builds several demonstrations, including propelling liquid metal and electrolytes with magnets and a railgun-style setup.

Nathan Kutz presents the spatio-temporal dynamics of rotating detonation rocket engines, including combustion fronts that behave like solitons. He shows a bifurcation analysis of a multiscale model that captures the main features.

Ben Felix explains how to decide between renting and buying a home, weighing financial and non-financial factors. He argues that renting is often as good or better than owning, both financially and for well-being.

Matthias Felleisen's keynote uses weather prediction as an analogy for type systems, arguing they forecast problems so you can act on them. It draws on his experience developing Typed Racket.

A short MIT Math Lab video showing millimetric droplets bouncing and walking across a vibrating fluid bath, guided by their own pilot waves. These droplets show diffraction, tunneling and quantized orbits, which were once thought to belong only to quantum systems.

Rich Hickey's Clojure/Conj 2018 keynote argues that Maybe/Option types and rigid type signatures are a poor way to model data that changes over time. He builds the case around optionality, schema growth and compatibility, and presents the ideas behind Clojure spec as an alternative.

Technology Connections explains that the so-called EV charger in an electric car's charging cable or wall unit is really an EVSE, a smart switch that safely delivers AC power. The actual charger is inside the car. The video covers the safety signaling and mechanisms involved.

Matt Might's Curry On talk on ending errors in code, both software and the human genome. He covers conservative approximation of the halting problem via static analysis and a computational approach to precision medicine.

Ian Piumarta's 2007 Stanford EE380 lecture on building a dynamic programming environment from the ground up, from the Viewpoints Research Institute's work. It covers the design of a language and system with a recursive design, parsing through code generation, and the COLA architecture.

Boston Dynamics' March 2008 video of BigDog, a four-legged robot, walking on ice and snow, climbing rubble and recovering from slips and kicks.

Bret Victor's talk on Drawing Dynamic Visualizations. It argues that visualization tools offer either the directness of hand drawing or the dynamics of programmed graphics, and shows a tool that combines both.

Julien Verlaguet of Facebook describes applying static analysis and type inference to a very large PHP codebase, using OCaml. The work led to the Hack language.

Troy Hunt argues that even static, non-secret websites need HTTPS, demonstrating attacks such as injected content and China's Great Cannon. It accompanies his blog post of the same name.

A 2001 panel with Paul Graham, John Maeda, Jonathan Rees and Guy Steele on programming language design, part of the Dynamic Languages Wizards Series.

Flanders and Swann perform 'First and Second Law', a comic song about the laws of thermodynamics, from their 1964 stage show At the Drop of Another Hat. It sets the first and second laws to a deadpan call-and-response routine.

A GoPro-recorded flight of an RC glider setting a 548 mph dynamic soaring speed record at Parker Mountain, California, using only wind gradients.

A one-minute clip of Spencer Lisenby setting a 545 mph speed record in an RC glider, the Transonic DP, using dynamic soaring. No motor is involved.

The UK DVSA's one-minute guide to the hazard perception part of the driving theory test, covering when to click and how to score well.

Phone footage of looting in the makeup aisle of a San Francisco CVS, with commentary that police did not show.

Disney Research's demo of quasistatic cavity resonance, which uses a purpose-built room or cabinet to generate magnetic fields that deliver kilowatts of power wirelessly to mobile receivers inside.

Dave Jones of EEVblog investigates why a 4K BenQ monitor switches itself off, tracing it to static discharge from an office chair. He uses an oscilloscope to examine the static impulses.

Adam Savage builds a Victorian-style rickshaw carriage for Boston Dynamics' Spot robot to pull, with him riding as passenger. The video covers the build and the engineering problems of pairing cutting-edge robotics with vintage transport, such as tuning the payload through Spot's API.

Johann Korndorfer's NVScene 2015 talk on building content with signed distance functions. It focuses on patterns that make SDF modelling more structured, arguing that SDFs capture a shape's essence like vector graphics do compared with polygons or voxels.

Boston Dynamics' 2010 demo of BigDog, a quadruped robot that climbs through woods, recovers from kicks, slips on ice and jogs at 5 mph. It was an early showcase of dynamic legged locomotion.

Boston Dynamics shows its Atlas humanoid robot performing a gymnastics and parkour routine, using optimization-generated motions and a model predictive controller.