I watch a lot of talks and technical videos in my spare time. It’s my way to keep up with trends. Some of the videos are noice, but here are some of the ones that are signals.
Light Years Ahead
Robert Wills explains the guiding system used in the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing. He covers some of the challenges and genius workarounds implemented in the small and complex computer.
Apollo 15 Proves Galileo Correct
This is a short clip where Commander David Scott of Apollo 15 proves that Galileo was right when he stated that objects regardless of weight fall at the same speed (see his Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment). Commander Scott drops a feather and a hammer at the same time to test the hypothesis.
NASA Astronauts Performing Gymnastics On Board of the Skylab
Prior to the ISS collaboration, the US and USSR had their own separate space stations; Skylab and MIR, respectively. While onboard Skylab some of the astronauts filmed themselves doing acrobatics while weightless.
Growing a Language
Guy Steele talks about language design, and whether a language should be small and demand the users expand the language as needed, or if a language should be large to simplify common tasks. What’s particularly interesting with this talk is that he doesn’t allow himself to use words longer than on syllable. If he want’s to use a longer word, he must first define it. While the whole talk is interesting, the first 15 minutes is particularly so because of the experiment.
The Clean Architecture
I recently looked into Clean Architecture, and was afraid I had to support Uncle Bob by purchasing his book 😬. Thankfully that’s not the case, as it’s apparently his interpretation on existing ideas. This excellent talk by Ian Cooper sums it all up nicely, with code examples at the end.
Metric Paper
CGP Grey have been making interesting videos for over a decade. In this one he visualizes the size of everything compared to a A4 piece of paper.
Refactoring UI
I’m no designer (I mean, look at this blog), but I wish I was a bit better at putting UI components together. Steve Shoger’s talk on refactoring UI by making small tweaks and changes to improve the overall design is great. He live redesigns(?) a page on stage while talking us through his thought process.