value specification

Rich Hickey's JaxConf 2012 keynote examines what values are and why immutable values matter as information systems grow more complex and data gets bigger. It contrasts places with values and builds the case for immutability.

Bryan Cantrill's Monktoberfest 2017 talk on leadership and organizational principles, ranging from the Gettysburg Address to Uber and Amazon. He argues for the difference between principles and values and criticizes vague corporate principles.

Bryan Cantrill argues that programming languages and platforms reflect core values, and compares languages through that lens, with Rust as a main example. He draws on his experience with Solaris, DTrace and ZFS.

Roaring Kitty's July 2020 analysis of GameStop, arguing a bullish deep-value case when the stock was about $4 and short interest exceeded 100%. It covers fundamentals, cash balance and technicals.

Leslie Lamport argues that programmers, like architects, should write rigorous specifications before coding, especially for concurrent and distributed systems. The talk introduces the case for writing specs (the TLA+ mindset) as a way of thinking above the code.

Hillel Wayne's Strange Loop talk introducing TLA+ as a specification language for finding concurrency bugs in designs. It covers stalling, race conditions and dropped messages, with PlusCal examples.

The Futur's guide to pricing design and creative work, arguing against hourly rates and for value-based pricing. It features Blair Enns and says to price the client, not the job.

Mike Rowe, host of Dirty Jobs, shares stories from messy real-world jobs in this TED talk. He argues that hard work has been unjustly degraded in society.

A podcast episode of Arrested DevOps with Andrew Clay Shafer and Bryan Cantrill, featuring Cantrill's rant on integrity in companies and technology.

Cognitive scientist George Lakoff lectures on how political debates are framed through language and metaphors tied to values, and on the moral worldviews behind progressive and conservative politics. It was given in 2005 at UC San Diego.

Alan Kay's Stanford Startup School lecture covers his career at Xerox PARC and how to think about inventing the future. He goes through what came out of PARC and why companies fail to capitalize on such ideas.

Bryan Cantrill's Monktoberfest 2016 talk on how software engineers pass knowledge down through oral tradition, from folk rhymes to programmer lore and stories like why C lacks a logical XOR. He argues for writing software with future generations in mind.

Dirk Hohndel explains why the Subsurface dive log project migrated from Gtk to Qt, the obstacles encountered, and advice for other applications frustrated with Gtk. It is a linux.conf.au 2014 talk.

Bryan Cantrill's Uptime 2017 talk on the engineering challenges of the stateful data path, including storage, firmware and hardware bugs. It uses the 'zebras vs. horses' diagnostic heuristic to explain why rare failures keep appearing.

RealLifeLore explains with maps why Russia invaded Ukraine, focusing on energy resources, security buffers, Black Sea access and Crimea's strategic value.

Mike of mikeselectricstuff shows his heavily modified old BBC Micro system in a 28-minute tour of 8-bit hardware archaeology.

A 1952 filmed interview in which Romney Wheeler talks with philosopher Bertrand Russell at his home in Surrey. Russell discusses his outlook and reflects on how the world changed over the first half of the century.

The 1997 novelty song by Komar and Melamid with composer Dave Soldier, built from survey results on what listeners dislike most in music. It features bagpipes, an opera singer rapping, and a children's choir urging shopping at Wal-Mart.

Michael Feathers' GOTO Chicago 2018 talk on reducing error checks and conditional logic in code. He offers a framework for handling errors and decisions at the level of code and architecture.

Nadia Polikarpova's Strange Loop talk on program synthesis driven by refinement types, as in Synquid. It shows how rich type specifications can be turned into verified, executable code.

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.

Physicist Angela Collier uses Gell-Mann amnesia to critique pop-science figures, especially Michio Kaku, and works through an eigenvalue problem along the way. It is a long, rambling commentary on how experts see simplified explanations of their own field.

Robert Moss's JuliaCon 2015 talk describes using Julia as a specification language for ACAS X, the next-generation airborne collision avoidance system that succeeds TCAS.

Jim Coplien and Bob Martin debate test-driven development and unit testing in an InfoQ video that grew out of a JAOO 2007 dispute. They also touch on design and architecture.

An AWS re:Invent 2014 talk on the core distributed systems primitives behind AWS and Amazon.com, such as consensus, key-value stores and transactional logging. It describes how AWS builds large services from a few common building blocks.

A Wendover Productions video on how the art market works, arguing that prices are driven by wealth, storage and tax mechanics rather than artistic value.

David Graeber's RSA lecture on bullshit jobs, expanding on his essay about why so many people do work they believe is pointless. He discusses what this says about the modern economy and the way society values work.