O'Reilly: the videos Hacker News recommends
Not the channel's most viewed videos: the ones HN commenters kept linking with real commentary. The top pick, "Velocity NY 2013: Richard Cook, "Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems"", hN people cite it constantly as the clearest explanation of normalization of deviance and how complex systems drift toward failure.
- 4 HN recommenders 10 months 2017–2021talkHN people cite it constantly as the clearest explanation of normalization of deviance and how complex systems drift toward failure.
- 6 HN recommenders 6 months 2018–2025talkIt is the go-to funny, irreverent critique of notebooks, linked whenever HN debates notebooks versus testable code.
- 5 HN recommenders 6 months 2012–2026talkHN cites it in discussions of language evangelism, community dynamics and zealotry, as an accessible account of how a good language can die for non-technical reasons.
- 3 HN recommenders 4 months 2013–2021talkHN people recommend it as a must-watch for anyone running complex systems, and some rewatch it regularly to remember its principles.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2015–2025talkHN recommends it as an excellent programmer-friendly explanation of p-values and statistical thinking.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017–2024talkHN commenters regard it as an inspiring, all-time favorite demonstration of live coding music.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2010–2011talkHN commenters recommend it as an energetic, unscripted talk on creating for the long term and hustling.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2012–2023talkHN uses it as a concise statement of the thinking behind Go's design.
- 3 HN recommenders 3 months 2017talkHN commenters recommend it when asked how to learn better or keep improving.
- 1 HN recommenders 2 months 2015–2020talkHN cites it as a firsthand account of how dysfunctional large IT projects can be, with about 50 contractors and no one in charge.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2009–2016talkRecommended in Ask HN career threads as motivational advice to use spare hours to start building.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2015–2018talkRecommended in debates over whether software is real engineering, as a well-argued case that building is cheap relative to simulating.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2010–2024talkHN invokes it as a reframing of the information overload problem, often when discussing content filtering, tagging and curation.
- 2 HN recommenders 2 months 2018–2023talkHN regards it as a pivotal early talk in the DevOps movement and the original source for the idea.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2011–2021talkCited as the memorable case for moving to SSDs and as an example of how swearing can make a talk stick.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2012–2018talkHN commenters cite it as a primary source for facts such as Amazon.com running on AWS and its very frequent deployments.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2010–2023talkHN points to it for Hamilton's datacenter cost breakdown and as a primary source for claims about power versus hardware costs.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2011–2012talkCited in Rails performance and Rack design discussions for Patterson's analysis of stack depth and garbage collection.
- 1 HN recommenders 1 months 2011–2016talkCited for its critique of talent wasted on social media and for the data-mining-for-biology argument, plus the around-14-minute quitting moment.
- cited 4× 0 months 2012–2018talkBrought up whenever medical device security or open-source firmware in implants is discussed.
Questions
Which O'Reilly video does Hacker News recommend most?
Velocity NY 2013: Richard Cook, "Resilience In Complex Adaptive Systems": recommended in 10 different months by 4 HN users between 2017 and 2021.
Is this every O'Reilly video?
No. Only videos that at least three different HN users linked, in at least three different months, with at least a sentence of their own commentary. That filter is what makes the list useful.
Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.