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Software Engineering's Greatest Hits

Greg Wilson
Talks
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this talk2 months2021–2022 score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN people recommend it as an evidence-based counterweight to opinion in software engineering debates.

Greg Wilson surveys what empirical research actually shows about software development, why we believe it, and how to share that knowledge more widely. It covers evidence on practices such as TDD and design patterns.

“I highly recommend watching Greg Wilson's Software Engineering's Greatest Hits[1].” (HN, 2022)

1 strong recommendations · 1 recommendations · 2 citations · Talks

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@nestorD Aug 2022 Strongly recommends
on HN thread I have complicated feelings about TDD
There are quantitative studies showing that TDD has little to no impact development time or code quality[0]. What has been found, however, is that writing code in short increments helps a lot (something that can be caused by using TDD). For more information on studies covering the topic (and much more), I highly recommend watching Greg Wilson's Software Engineering's Greatest Hits[1]. [0]: [link] [1]: [this video]
Studies on TDD and other practices, such as short increments
@dang Jul 2021 Recommends
on HN thread Software engineering research is a train wreck
That (or more likely [this video] since that's where the info is) would make a good HN submission in its own right. Probably best to wait a few days to let the hivemind caches clear (followup/copycat posts aren't great: [link] ). If you submit it, let us know at hn@ycombinator.com so we can put it in the second-chance pool ( [link] , explained at [link] ), so it will get a random placement on HN's front page.
Worth its own HN submission as the source of the info

Citations, criticism and jokes

@Supermancho May 2022 Cites it
on HN thread I don't know how to build software
Read more
> Most of the critics of waterfall haven't actually worked in such a project. I wouldn't say that's true. > Most of the critics of either C or javascript haven't actually built anything noteworthy with it. That's oddly out-of-place gatekeeping. I've built large things in C 25 years ago that didn't get finished or weren't put in production. That's enough to learn about C, at the time . > Most of the critics of OOP don't have much practical experience with it I wouldn't say that's true. I read a collection of thoughts that feels like a combination of imposter syndrome (20 applications in 20 years? yeesh, that's sparse) and blanket characterization through arbitrary gatekeeping. I understand what they are getting at. This sort of critique about software development practice critique was better covered in "What We Think We Know About Software Development and Why We Believe it’s True."[1] - [link] [1] About 18 months ~ 2yrs ago, all copies of this keynote were scrubbed from the internet as part of Greg Wilson capitalizing on his geek-fame with an Oreilly book and appearances. Recently, there has been an explosion of Greg Wilson videos on youtube. Not sure how long it will last. Similar information is presented in this updated, broad presentation that Greg Wilson put up: [this video] and there's a PDF and a dry, stale version of the keynote presentation that I can't find again.
Updated broad presentation by Greg Wilson with similar information

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.

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