Talks and videos every software engineer should watch

Introduction #

I love watching YouTube. Specially, technical talks and videos related to software development.

This is a small compilation of talks and technical videos that I have enjoyed. I went through the list of videos I have liked on YouTube and read 5,000+ of their titles to create this list. I'm sure there are others that I can't remember right now, but I'll try to keep this post updated (history).

General #

• The Art of Code - Dylan Beattie
• "Uncle" Bob Martin - "The Future of Programming"
• Profiling Desktop Applications - Federico Mena Quintero: I didn't find this talk on YouTube, so...
• Meet the inventor of the electronic spreadsheet | Dan Bricklin
• Why Static Typing Came Back • Richard Feldman • GOTO 2022
• Plain Text • Dylan Beattie • GOTO 2023

Web #

• Project Code Rush - The Beginnings of Netscape / Mozilla Documentary
• HTTP headers for the responsible developer by Stefan Judis | JSConf EU 2019
• Predicting the Future of the Web Development (2020 and 2025)

Algorithms #

• 19. Dynamic Programming I: Fibonacci, Shortest Paths
• Big O Notation

Software architecture #

• Uncle Bob SOLID principles

Operations / Observability #

• AWS re:Invent 2022 - Observability best practices at Amazon (COP343)

Graphics #

• An introduction to Shader Art Coding

Tools #

Git #

(yeah, I love watching talks about git)

• Tech Talk: Linus Torvalds on git: Linus, being the creator of git and the Linux kernel, explains how git works for their use case.
• Lecture 6: Version Control (git) (2020)
• Dissecting Git's Guts, Emily Xie - Git Merge 2016
• Advanced Git: Graphs, Hashes, and Compression, Oh My!
• Linux Kernel Development, Greg Kroah-Hartman - Git Merge 2016
• Five Ways to Break a Git Repository - Edward Thomson

awk #

• EVERYONE Needs to Learn a Little Bit of AWK!

Databases #

• Database Indexing Explained (with PostgreSQL)

Machine learning #

• AlphaFold: The making of a scientific breakthrough
• AlphaGo - The Movie | Full Documentary
• But what is a neural network? | Chapter 1, Deep learning
• Gradient descent, how neural networks learn | Chapter 2, Deep learning
• What is backpropagation really doing? | Chapter 3, Deep learning

Languages #

JavaScript #

• Jafar Husain: Async Programming in ES7 | JSConf US 2015
• dotJS 2019 - Maggie Johnson-Pint - Programming in the 4th Dimension - Making Time Make Sense
• dotJS 2019 - Stefan Judis - Regular expressions my secret love
• Fun With Bluetooth
• The Weird History of JavaScript
• TypeScript: Static Types for JavaScript
• Rich Harris - Rethinking reactivity
• Async Iterators & Generators - HTTP203 Advent
• Typed JavaScript? For real? The type annotations proposal and what it’s all about

Java (RxJava) #

• Managing State with RxJava by Jake Wharton
• Functional Reactive Programming with RxJava
• Droidcon SF - Common RxJava Mistakes

C# #

• Change your habits: Modern techniques for modern C# - Bill Wagne

C and C++ #

• CppCon 2015: Greg Law "Give me 15 minutes & I'll change your view of GDB"

Rust #

• Rust's Journey to Async/Await

Hacking, hardware and security #

• How VGA Works
• What does a computer mouse see?
• How Telephone Phreaking Worked
• 5 Cool Things You Can Do With An RTL SDR Receiver
• How a Character LCD works:
  • Part 1
  • Part 2
• 28c3: Smart Hacking for Privacy
• Worst JavaScript Flaws That Hackers Love To Abuse
• Attacking CPUs with Power Side Channels from Software: Warum leaked hier Strom? (en)
• How Do I Crack Satellite and Cable Pay TV? (33c3)
• Console Hacking 2016 (33c3)
• Playstation 4 Hacked by fail0verflow presentation from 33C3
• The Ultimate Game Boy Talk (33c3)
• Reproducible Builds
• DEF CON 31 - Badge of Shame Breaking into Secure Facilities with OSDP -Dan Petro, David Vargas
• I ported THOUSANDS of apps to Windows 95

Game consoles #

• Why is the Sony PlayStation PS3 so hard to emulate ? | MVG
• How a pair of Tweezers defeated security on the Nintendo Wii | MVG
• Did Nintendo really forget to Optimize Super Mario 64 ? | MVG
• Sega Saturn CD - Cracked after 20 years

Audio / Telephony #

• Hak5 - Pulse Code Modulation
• Hak5 - Time Division Multiplexing

Networking #

• THE UNTOLD STORY: How the PIX Firewall and NAT Saved the Internet
• 38C3 - A dive into DNS

Awesome YouTube Channels #

These channels deserve their own category

Tom Scott #

• Why The Web Is Such A Mess
• The Two Generals’ Problem
• How Binary Search Makes Computers Much, Much Faster
• The Consequences of Your Code
• Why Computers Can't Count Sometimes
• The Artificial Intelligence That Deleted A Century
• ⚫ How The Black Point Message Crashes Android Apps
• FizzBuzz: One Simple Interview Question
• Why 2020 Started On December 30th
• The Lava Lamps That Help Keep The Internet Secure

Ben Eater #

• Comparing C to machine language
• What is error correction? Hamming codes in hardware
• “Hello, world” from scratch on a 6502 — Part 1
• How do CPUs read machine code? — 6502 part 2
• Assembly language vs. machine code — 6502 part 3
• Connecting an LCD to our computer — 6502 part 4
• What is a stack and how does it work? — 6502 part 5
• RAM and bus timing — 6502 part 6
• Subroutine calls, now with RAM — 6502 part 7
• World's worst video card gets better?
• How assembly language loops work
• How does a USB keyboard work?
• How does USB device discovery work?
• How does n-key rollover work?
• The RS-232 protocol
• RS232 interface with the 6551 UART

LiveOverflow #

• Solving Nintendo HireMe!!! with "Basic" Math
• XSS on Google Search - Sanitizing HTML in The Client?
• How do SIM Cards work? - SIMtrace
• Fiber Tapping - Monitoring Fiber Optic Connections
• File Path Race Condition & How To Prevent It - bin 0x31
• Reverse engineering obfuscated JavaScript - PopUnder Chrome 59
• Reverse Engineering Introduction Walkthrough
• Nintendo Switch (NVIDIA Tegra X1) - BootROM Vulnerability
• Self-aware Video: it knows its own YouTube Video ID?
• Patching Binaries (with vim, Binary Ninja, Ghidra and radare2) - bin 0x2F
• XS-Search abusing the Chrome XSS Auditor - filemanager 35c3ctf
• Google Paid Me to Talk About a Security Issue!
• The Heap: what does malloc() do? - bin 0x14
• Finding iOS Kernel Exploit // SockPuppet Jailbreak - CVE-2019-8605
• HOW FRCKN' HARD IS IT TO UNDERSTAND A URL?! - uXSS CVE-2018-6128
• Cannot access memory at address // Debugging PIE Binaries affected by ASLR - bin 0x2E
• Zero-day vulnerability in Bash - Suidbash Google CTF Finals 2019 (pwn)
• What is a Protocol? (Deepdive)
• How Do Linux Kernel Drivers Work? - Learning Resource

Computerphile #

• Hello World on Sega Megadrive - Computerphile
• Feistel Cipher - Computerphile
• 128 Bit or 256 Bit Encryption? - Computerphile
• Video Streaming Problems - Computerphile
• Reason for ARM (Acorn Archimedes at 30) - Computerphile
• Facebook's Code Checker - Computerphile
• Characters, Symbols and the Unicode Miracle - Computerphile
• Regular Expressions - Computerphile
• The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile
• Parsing Explained - Computerphile
• Recursion 'Super Power' (in Python) - Computerphile
• The Knapsack Problem & Genetic Algorithms - Computerphile
• Tabs or Spaces? (Soundcheck Question) - Computerphile
• How NOT to Store Passwords! - Computerphile
• How NOT to Sample Audio! - Computerphile
• Binary Search Algorithm - Computerphile
• How CPUs do Out Of Order Operations - Computerphile
• End to End Encryption (E2EE)
• Secret Key Exchange (Diffie-Hellman)
• Transport Layer Security (TLS)
• TLS Handshake Explained
• Breaking RSA
• What are Digital Signatures?

Stand-up Maths #

These videos are more about maths than software engineering, but we should know this stuff, right?

• How many different Youtube videos are possible?
• There is only One True Parabola
• Why is the Apple Calendar so broken?
• When Spreadsheets Attack!
• The beautiful maths which makes 5G faster than 4G, faster than 3G, faster than...

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