Growing a Language
Guy Steele·1998·OOPSLA·53 minGuy Steele's celebrated keynote — delivered using only one-syllable words at first — on what a language must let its users extend.
The Computer Revolution Hasn't Happened Yet
Alan Kay·1997·OOPSLAAlan Kay's OOPSLA keynote on how far we still are from the medium computers could be — and how much of what we call 'OOP' missed the point.
The Wet Codebase
Dan Abramov·2019·DeconstructAbramov on what DRY actually costs once you've lived with a too-clever abstraction — and why writing the same code twice is sometimes the right answer.
Spec-ulation
Rich Hickey·2016·Clojure ConjHickey on versioning, breaking changes, and the quiet violence we do to downstream users when we 'fix' our APIs in place.
Stewardship: The Sobering Parts
Brian Goetz·2014·Clojure ConjBrian Goetz on what it's like to evolve Java for nine million developers — where the real constraints come not from type theory but from compatibility, mental models, and the slow patience of language design.
Crafting quality that endures
Karri Saarinen·2025·Figma ConfigThe Linear CEO on why software quality is something a company has to value out loud — and how Linear's process keeps the bar from drifting as it scales.
Design in Practice
Rich Hickey·2023·Clojure ConjAfter years of talking about design in the abstract, Hickey demystifies the actual practice — the concrete moves and habits that turn 'design' from a noun into a verb.