Steele's Growing a Language is a Masterpiece
If you are at all interested in differences between programming languages and the trade offs a programming language designer must make, and if you haven't already seen it, you really must watch Growing a Language, Guy Steele's Keynote from the 1998 OOPSLA conference.
Not only is the content fascinating, but there's a wonderful twist he starts to reveal at 7:45 (through to 9:00) to do with the whole style of the presentation (which does seem odd, though humorous, at first). It's like something out of Gödel, Escher, Bach where the structure, as much as the surface content, is where the message lies.
I don't want to say too much more, lest I give things away, but the talk really is a masterpiece.
Comments (3)
Jesse Legg on Nov. 25, 2008:
I watched this a couple of months ago and it is AWESOME.
One of the best computer science presentation's I have ever seen.
Patrick on Nov. 27, 2008:
That was a lot of fun, thanks for the link! Everyone should see this.
Last Modified: Nov. 25, 2008
Author: James Tauber
Jeremy James on Nov. 25, 2008:
After seeing Guy's Growing a Language a few months ago I went around telling everyone I knew about it, regardless of interest in programming.
With talks like this and the "50 in 50" talk he did with Richard Gabriel, I think he should go on tour raveling and unraveling the minds of thinking people everywhere. Very entertaining.