HackerTube / Video
"The Mess We're In" by Joe Armstrong
Strange Loop Conference
Joe Armstrong, co-inventor of Erlang, gives a funny and opinionated Strange Loop talk on the tangled state of software: build tools, package managers, entropy and the physical limits of computation. He argues for ideas like naming things by content hash and throwing away your first version.
HN returns to it constantly as a witty, still-accurate diagnosis of why software is bloated and messy, and as a go-to recommendation in any thread on modules, package managers or software quality.
20 Hacker News mentions · 2014–2025