technical interviews

Ward Cunningham explains the history and intent of the debt metaphor, which he coined while refactoring the WyCash product. He says debt means code reflecting an incomplete understanding of the problem, not sloppy programming.

Part one of Errol Morris's First Person interview with Murray Richman, a New York lawyer who defends mob figures. He talks about how he sees the law and his clients.

Street interviews of over 50 passersby in Times Square, asked what a browser is. Many answers show people confuse browsers with search engines or the internet.

Robert Martin's RailsConf 2009 talk looks at why Smalltalk lost out despite its technical strengths. He draws lessons about language communities and arrogance that he argues could hurt Ruby too.

A 2008 Google Tech Talk making the case for the liquid fluoride thorium reactor as an abundant, safe source of electrical power. It covers the technical motivations and design of thorium molten-salt reactors.

The original five-minute Dropbox demo video, which presented the product's features before a finished product existed. It was aimed at technical early adopters and became famous as a launch strategy.

Nardwuar interviews Pharrell and Shay of N.E.R.D. in Vancouver, using his trademark deep research and gifts. The extended version runs about ten minutes.

Kirk McKusick gives a narrative history of BSD from its start at UC Berkeley in the late 1970s through the 1980s releases and the lawsuit that led to 4.4BSD-Lite in 1992. It is full of anecdotes from a key developer.

A 2007 Computer History Museum conversation in which Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang interviews TSMC founder Morris Chang. Chang recounts his career and the creation of the dedicated silicon foundry model.

Peter Norvig, then Director of Research at Google, talks at Startup School 2008 about leveraging large amounts of data and about technical challenges in Google projects such as image search. A central idea is that data can beat hand-written programming.

A spoof industrial promo for the Rockwell Retro Encabulator, a deadpan stream of technobabble about an imaginary machine. It is a classic engineering in-joke.

A 256-byte MS-DOS intro that renders a raymarched, procedural 3D animation. It won the 256-byte competition at Riverwash 2009 and the scene.org award for best technical achievement that year, and the author published commented x86 assembly source.

A one-minute clip of Scotty from Star Trek giving advice to engineers about managing expectations in estimates. It is a comedic bit of workplace wisdom.

A one-minute clip from Chappelle's Show in which Dave Chappelle riffs on Ja Rule and the 'what does Ja Rule say' bit. It is a short comedy sketch with no technical content.

A short CSI clip in which characters try to track a killer's IP address by writing a Visual Basic GUI. It is a famous example of absurd TV hacking.

A short comedy video of the Turbo Encabulator, a piece of technobabble nonsense describing an imaginary machine in deadpan engineering language.

A Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch in which a job interview descends into absurdity, with Portuguese subtitles. It is a short comedy bit about nonsensical interviews.