"Uncle" Bob Martin - "The Future of Programming" 

This is eye opening lecture for programming ethics and moral standards. What an energy Uncle Bob... so inspiring...

Coming from Bob's generation and relating to 90% of the times, people, technology he so beautifully--funnily-expertly narrated, I MUST admit this is 1 of the top 5 best I ever watched and was humbled by his sense of awe and reality, with an extraordinary ability to look into the future!!

I am an instant fan. Thank you uncle Bob Martin! My father became an IBM 1401 computer programmer in the 60's and I became a computer programmer in 82. After 30+ years of experience I felt alone thinking I was the only IT professional that saw the whole software industry as a chaotic clusterfuck of languages, code and frameworks from hell. Everyone else seems to adore the nonsense and inefficiency of software development - I call it "bug farms". Thank you for telling it so clearly in such detail and with fun.

This is a mindblowing talk. I love every part of it.

I was sick in bed and watching RU-vid. Fell asleep, and woke up half through this. This man is such an extraordinary storyteller, and made for some awesome dreams.

Programmers everywhere need to watch this!! Priceless and important

Good video, tells story of the evolution of programming profession. I can vouch for his story as i retired at age 72 in 2015 after 52 years in and around programming.

Absolute Legend. Every new programmer and CS undergrad should watch this talk closely IMO.

This was one of the most sober talks i have seen in a while! I wish that I could show this video to several people, but probably they would not have the patience and the discipline to watch til the end and assimilate the message. Maybe we are faded to become regulated like doctors, engineers, architects and be there for our choices. It's true, no one understands us. Project managers, 9/10 do not understand us. It's our job to assume risks and commit to something greater. Its our job to say no (quite often sometimes). It's our job to stop thinking this profession is just a playground of self experiment and showcases. Too many show cases. Such a nice talk, thanks for the reflection!

The last 20 mins were the most valuable what I have ever heard. I thought I am alone with this opinion on the Earth

This was such a great story telling of history. A must see for young programmers!

1:12:28 he started to sound like joker from dark knight lol

Compelling presentation from a legend.

I watched every minute of it and didn't get bored at all. I must say it is a scary future that Bob Martin showed for us there, and i can't say that we won't get there.

Always good to hear these talks from someone who actually lived it. The Fortran - hole puncher - rubber band /basket - computer operator handoff - 24 hr. delay process really shows how far things have progressed.

I wish you good health Uncle Bob! Thanks for the talk!

"We didn't get into this business to kill people." Weapon systems software devs: "Speak for yourself!"

Just adding a transcribed quote for something I'm writing - one of the highlights for me: Quote: from 57:45 - "If we have made any advances in software, since 1945, it is almost entirely in what not to do. Structured Programming was in what not to do - don't use unrestrained goto. Functional Programming - don't use assignment. Object Oriented Programming - don't use pointers to functions. What we have learned over the last 70-some years is more about what not to do, than what to do. There have been no radical advances in software technology. The craft of writing software remains roughly the same as it was in 1945 - a little more modern, but not essentially any different." - to 58.43

This is simply the best programming talk that I have ever seen in my life. The way that this great man delivers ideas he have is amazing.

This so much more relevant today! Uncle Bob always ahead of the curve!

Woah that was really cool. I did not expect that ending of regulating ourselves but it does sound like it would make us more responsible and therefore more productive and purposeful in our programming.

31:15: That was me, back in the day. The computer operator. Still have the lab coat I wore.

One of the most informative\elucidating talks on programming and its cumulative history I have ever heard, thank you.

I have always ignored this video for a very long time so today I decided to watch it and uncle sure does have some very valid points very valid.

I can listen to Uncle Bob forever. Great one.

He mentioned the Toyota "unintended acceleration" situation and the court case, but I do not think he properly conveyed the stark danger of what happened there. First off, Toyota followed agregiously negligent practices. Among other things, the auto industry has 94 "required" coding practices and 30 "recommended" practices when it comes to development of firmware code. In Toyotas code, they nailed 4 of those practices. They only even CLAIMED to be doing 9. Their developers did not even have a bug tracker. He mentions that Toyota had to pay out a lot of money. That is either not true or at least we don't know if it is. What happened is that in a CIVIL lawuit, Toyota was made to pay $1.5 million to each of 2 families of people killed, so $3 million total. Then, after the jury had pronounced them responsible for the deaths, but before the jury could award a punitive damage amount, Toyota settled confidentially with the 2 families that brought the suit. We don't know how much that was for. The purpose of punitive damages is to provide an economic wound so large that the company would have to be suicidal to continue their behavior. It is the ONLY effective way to modify the behavior of a corporation. We know from actual cases that car companies in particular like to simply calculate how much they are likely to have to pay out in lawsuits and compare it to how much it would cost to change their behavior, and do with whichever is cheapest. It's usually the lawsuits unless there are large punitive damages changing that calculation. However the really scary part is the OTHER court case against Toyota over 'unintended acceleration.' The CRIMINAL case. They were charged with criminal negligence for their business practices which led to their own engineers being unable to produce safe code. And despite how over-the-top terrible their practices were... they were acquitted. Because there are no legally-binding standards when it comes to software. There are no 'licensed software engineers' like there are licensed structural engineers. If they built a bridge with the cheapest talent they could find, deprived them of the tools and time needed to make the bridge safe, and did not give those engineers the ability to make the decisions on when the bridge was ready (instead allowing MBAs to make that decision for business reasons), the executives and managers of the company would go to prison. Not 'the company gets fined', but individuals would get locked in a cage for doing things that are dangerous to people. But if software is involved? All bets are off. You can be as slapdash as you want and build things that kill people and just pay a few settlements to the few people who can afford to fight a lawsuit against you for years. Much cheaper than hiring expensive experienced experts and much more comfortable being able to treat them like generic replaceable cogs whose judgement any middle manager can override on a whim if it suits the business goals of the company.

When a new market emerges, is profitable, then investors come, profit decreases, competition is higher. When a new craftsmanship appears, and there are more students than masters the product quality lowers I guess. Me and most of my fellow programmers were thrown into production from day 1,the only mentors we had were search engines and now stack overflow, there is no wonder that waterfall and OOP were successful, enforces some rules and bring some order in chaos. And another thing that lowers the standards is that when it wasn't an elitist profession any longer it became a job, just a job to pay for bills, don't want to improve the code, just want to get the task done. This and hardware evolution, programmers lead by product managers and more factors ofc.

I'm a somewhat retired programmer. I retired for three main reasons. 1) health issues. I'm epileptic. so about once-twice a year I waste a few hours at a hospital after losing conscious. for some reason, I got always fired less than a week after that happening. 2) I didn't want to "finish" my code until I was sure it worked properly. for some reason, my bosses didn't care about that. they do care about telling the client "we did it before the deadline" 3) somehow the people that decide whom to hire got the idea that having worked for over three years in a language (and, goes without saying, four-five companies) it meant you were outdated because there's a newer version of said language. well, there's a fourth reason. I need a stable job to get a stable income and somehow put food on a plate in front of me. but that's beyond the point. now, you all may be thinking "why is this guy telling us about his life here?" well... the answer is simple. I wanted to introduce myself before I gave what I believe is the important stuff. I was hired by a company I'm not going to name as part of a group that had to do a simple task for an insurance company (that I'm not going to name). update the software from an old program that was made more than fifteen years ago to the new technologies. now, one of the first things I mentioned, at the interview when they explained what was the job, was that I had zero experience on the source programming language, only on the language that was used on the new version. their answer was "don't worry. you won't need it and, even if you need it, your companions will be able to help you" I though "what a great company. it's a lot better than the others I have worked before. maybe this will be my place" and I couldn't be more mistaken. what was the problem I found? there was two of them in fact. and I'm not sure which was worse: 1. every few days we found rounding errors over the original code. money quantities were rounded wrongly. and the client wanted us to keep them on. it got shocked me the first half dozen times. until I noticed all of them were in favor of the insurance company (and this is why I don't want to name it) so they didn't want to lose the extra income. it's unethical and made me puke but ok. I could understand it. 2. one day, during a meeting of the group, we got scolded because we were barely keeping the deadlines. we explained that we had to test the code to ensure it would work "properly" (note the quotes due to previous point) and their answer, a couple meters away from the insurance company main responsible for the project, was that it didn't matter if there was a few bugs on the code as long as the deadline was meeting. now... while I can understand that deadlines are one of the most important things on any serious project what pissed me off about this was this simple fact: is it really so important to finish a project in less than half a year when the source is a sofware that has been working, with intentional errors, for more than fifteen years? note: out of the eleven team members only one was female. and over half the team lacked any kind of relevant experience programming. sure, everybody knew the language we were using but, as pointed in this video, that and programming are two completely different things. thank you all for reading me until the end.

This talk heavily foreshadows the Boeing 737 Max.

After some years this real talk still current. Every developers should watch this at some point.

Defenitely the best...movie that I've seen this year. Yes it's such a great story, and listening how he's explaining that, and the succession of toughts, I can recognize that he's a programmer, and I'm proud of being one too. Thanks for the inspiration!

Every programmer should watch this video. Very inspiring

Excellent speech. Uncle Bob closed it with a golden key... Regulate, create a professional body just like for engineers and physicians.

This is 2019 and I am no Programmer of any kind but still enjoying your speech, very fun and knowledgable talk!

the discussion of core memory put me in mind of our old DEC-20 computers where I went to school. One of them had a set of PDP-11-based front end processors, which had real core memory (despite most of the rest of the memory in the system being solid state.) The PDP-11 FEPs would crash a lot, and a co-worker's comment was something along the lines of "It's a good thing that FEP has core memory, so it can remember how much it screwed up".

A masterly and authoratative lecture. Very engaging and a pleasure to listen to.

Absolutely mind blowing and eye opening video. I don't even realize I watched this whole video all at once. Great energy and experience Uncle Bob :)

@unclebob you were right with the recent Boeing accident only a few years after this talk. As programmer's we have to take responsibility for what we design and implement. To all who's affected by this horrible accident we apologize and hope not to let anyone down ever again.

Fascinating trip down computer history's memory lane. What a gem. Big thumbs up!

6:23 We will code objective c for food.😂😂😂

As a software developers with 25 years of commercial experience I find complexity has also risen exponentially for no sunstantial gain. For instance, one recent fad is javascript on the server, via nodejs....Heck, we were doing Javascript in (Classic) ASP back in 92. To paraphrase "Due to the exponential growth of developers every year, at least half of existing developers will have less than 5 years experience, and due to a lack of experience are continually destined to clumsily re-invent programming languages, libraries and platforms." This at least partially explains the endless fad language/platform churn of things like Rust, Go, Dart, Angular etc. Another reason for an endless array of languages/platforms/libraries is because the "inmates are running the asylum". The programmers get to pick the tech in most cases, and the latest craze is always perceived as being better, sometimes by programmers but usually by management, regardless of its practical utility. The more complex the language or tech the more kudos programmers believe they are owed. Many developers seek to become a high priest of a particular tech. When programmers meet, the more geeky ones especially, will try to ascertain your knowledge of a particular tech to work out your status relative to theirs. It also comes down to greed. Probably the largest reason for the rising complexity is IT PUTS BUMS ON SEATS that consulting companies can charge out. They charge more for the latest tech craze/fad and it is more lucrative for a developer to be on that wave. As its more lucrative for the developer to be on that latest tech craze/fad they make choices that move the industry to embrace it. And that's before you add a bunch of Industry Certs to stretch out the process of documenting requirements and testing and its a license to make money. Things don't become simpler because there is no money in making it simpler, and there is no money in making a complete do-everything solution either. Microsoft, Oracle etc have realised that their tech has greater buy-in when they create an incomplete solution on which external vendors must add functionality. This creates a mountain of vested interests in the product/solution. If it were simpler to create apps/programs/solutions then things would get done faster and there would be less money in it. Add increasing complexity to the development process and you can extrend the time it takes to make app/programs/solutions and therefore rake more money in.

I can't believe I watched the whole talk, and got my tears

I must've watched this talk about 5 times by now. It's absolutely beautiful.

Great talk! Wisdom beyond years. Everything you cover I not only witnessed it, I've lived it. Very good stuff!

Uncle Bob is fascinating from beginning to the end :)

What an amazing talk. I love Uncle Bob Martin. I wish we all could be so much professional and take responsibility of the code we write. I hope in the future, we the software developers will focus more on quality than quantity.

Wish I had an uncle who would tell me this story. I am available for adoption, not to mention.

This is what I am looking for centuries!

this talk aged like fine wine

Great talk, I recommend for every programmer.

This should be called the history of programming. Great talk.

15:10 just learnt why relays are called relays.

Many of my colleagues does not comprehend what Bob Martin talks about hence they are bored by this talk. They enjoy and share the shot and entertaining talks from Richard Feldman. I wish RU-vid would recommend this talk over that of Richard Feldman.

Best history of programming I have ever seen. And Bob you are so right about the future.

I agree on the idea about project managers invasion. Before this video, I could not understand why that project managers were needed, I even could not deduce what their responsibilities were. I refuse to accept the idea of having a project manager which does not like programing! and believe it or not, these kind of managers are part of most of the software companies nowadays.

I feel like this is the programming history video I've been looking for.

Summary: 80s-C/ObjC/C++ story about how Steve Jobs kept ObjC alive says no one is ever happy with their language Male skew/history Female skew goes back to 36 + Alan Turing...+ Annotated Turing book relays, mercury tubes, CRTs, ... 1945- Alan wrote floating point and made a couple statements "We shall need a great number of mathematicians of ability" because "there will probably be a good deal of work of this kind to be done" "One of our difficulties will be the maintenance of an appropriate discipline, so that we do not lose track of what we are doing" magnetic cores, you could actually shut off power and restore it and it'd continue running as if nothing had happened 53- Fortran, penciled coding forms -> punch cards 58- Lisp, functional programming 60- O(1E2) computers in the world, O(1E3) programmers that are 30yo mathematicians,scientists, and the like. No OS, libraries, etc. transistors 65- 10'000 1401 / O(1E4) computers (rent $2500/mo $20k/day), 4000 bytes memory. O(1E5) programmers, still learned adult trusted and disciplined people if not mathematicians, not 22 yo people out of school :) 68 - Dijkstra says goto bad, enter structured programming C - K&R, mathematicians 70- 1E5 computers / 1E6 programmers, 25 years from 1 to 1'000'00 programmers. Now CS courses, new are mostly male students in early 20s Programmers are doubling every 5 years, so less than half of all programmers have 5 years of experience. Hardware has changed tremendously, the iphone would have been the entire world's economic output: 50 trillion dollars and 170 Vehicle Assembly Buildings (the large building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, At 3,664,883 cubic meters 129,428,000 cubic feet it is one of the largest buildings in the world by volume), would require 500 of the largest nuclear power plants. And once it was built you'd have no one to call with it xD Software hasn't. You'd recognize the earliest code, you wouldn't like it but you'd understand it. You could time travel someone either direction and it'd take "24 hours" to recover from the shock/disappointment but they'd be able to understand and write the code. It's essentially assignments, if statements, and while loops. Any changes are what _not_ to do, structured = don't be crazy, functional = don't assign, OO = don't use function pointers (??, I don't feel like that's quite what was learned but whatever) What must change. Discipline. 2001- Agile manifesto, fixed time, estimate in relative units, customer communication, continuous integration, collboration, ... programmers can't agree on disclipline and technical practices Agile split- Business Practices \ Technical Practices What must change: "we (agile) must grow up", define profesion, choose practices and disciplines, reunify, someone has to lead. 1:11 everything in modern world uses software systems. Software can control breaking, steering wheels, and that _is_ killing people already. Programmers wrote code to "cheat" EPA "if in test mode ...". One day one of us is going to do something stupid that kills many of people and politicians will ask _us_ (programmers) "How did you let this happen?" and if we can't answer well they will regulate us setting what languages and morals/ethics and taking an oath to follow and some body that can discipline and prevent you from being a programmer.

As a designer that worked in a Dev group I can attest to everything he said, except how quickly I will change the way we all program.

Fun talk, I wrote my first program on a PDP-8, and in the same year on a IBM 360-30, that was in college, I liked the end result more than the programming, but the day we had to write internal codes, exits for that PDP-8, and the bootstrap loader, then my fun began, the college bought a PDP-11/45, for administration, we got the PDP-8 all for us to play with...I just loved it, I was hooked big time, I liked playing with the internal programs...I became another breed of programmer, a System Programmer, my first job we had an IBM 370-168 machine, a monster of a machine, I was introduced to one language we had a session on in college, Assembler, we really were a special breed, so much that I never heard a presentation on that career path, we had no girls in our groups, sometimes as many of 40 system programmers, not a single woman, we knew why, always on call 7/24, working all the special holliday, doing upgrades, maintenance, PTF's, exits, you name it, nobody in their right mind would like to live like that, getting a call in the middle of the xmas party and having to leave and go to the office....I loved every minute of it, what a life!!!

Allan Turring , a Great Software Engineer. Saw ahead of His Time.

I loved this, He has my juices flowing again to program. I'm paralyzed from neck down and learn some programing in the early 90' I would like to get back in to programming as much as I can but it's been so long I didn't remember much and have tried only to get overwhelmed. I type slow with a sip/puff before I used a mouth stick and could type 15-20 words a minute, not so with my sip/puff. I do have dragon software. Can someone point me to the right platform, language I should start learning. Thanks,

8:04 the moment I got sold on sticking for the entire video

Turned the video on and couldn't turn it off until the end. Captivating!)

Highly regard for Uncle Bob Martin, "The Future of Programming" talk provided a lot of knowledge about how software and hardware, programmers and computers evolve in last 75 years.

I would make this talk required watching for CS and EE students at the college level.

Wow, a powerful talk especially at the end

Such a great talk. This is going to be in my top list alongside Ryan Dahl's NodeJs Js Conf 2009 talk. Very elegant story telling !! Enjoyed it !!

proud to be part of this great man

Christ, I put this on to fall asleep... didnt expect to be so captivated. Great talk!

Wow. He predicted the Boeing 737 Max MCAS crash.

Awesome talk, he drives the point of responsibility of programmers. Glad I watched this talk

Quitting my job to dedicate my life to lisp

One of the best presentations I've seen on this topic. Now I'm gonna refer to "Uncle Bob" whenever a colleague is arguing for bureaucratic rules and governance over projects. DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! (S. Ballmer) :D

Mr Bob tried to make a point and according to the comments a lot of people have missed that point. The future of programming is in better self regulation in the technical aspect of our profession. We have mass production of programmers and software while Agile slid into the business waters leaving nobody to actually care about the quality and potential disastrous consequences.

Absolutely excellent, thank you for the video.

0:00 - Introduction And History About 58:40 - Future of Programming thank's me later..

1:14:00 'we rule the world'; love this!

Incredibly inspiring, thank you Uncle Bob! Maybe only last 20 minutes or so actually are about the future, but I found entire talk fascinating. I guess it's time for a Lisp tutorial.. ;D On a more serious note , until now I 've only known Uncle for his books. As it is said, if you want to read only one book about programming, pick one of his. I found his talk no less interesting and, how to put it, understandable and entertaining without need for several Ph.D.'s or other degrees :P This man is a legend.

I remember back in 1993 during my training on Keelser AFB basic electronics, learning and working on a Sperry 1000 UNIVAC mainframe. We were asked to write out a message in Machine Code and punch it onto the card reader that they were still maintaining. Then 9 months later when I got to McChord AFB (62 Communications squadron) the USAF was finally ripping all that old stuff and replacing it with Novell servers and Windows for Workgroups 3.11 running on Zenith Z 386 desktops. How the times have changed. I didn't spend much time in programming but I was learning the ropes as a Novell systems administrator and was very much excited to play around with Linux. After 26 years of being on the admin side of things, I have started to take an interest in learning C/C++.

In light of the recent Boeing plane crashes due to software, the last bit of this lecture is chillingly accurate and foreboding...

Professionalism. Discipline. Attention to details. That's the bottom line.

A very interesting talk. Must watch for every programmer

Ron Hochsprung I enjoyed this very much. Especially when you mentioned using the Illinois Institute of Technology computers. I implemented the IITROS system that you probably used, and was one of the designers of tITRAN programming language. Your description of programming in the old days with punched cards, batched processing, 1-day turnarounds, etc. brought back so many memories. Thanks.

uncle bob is a very charismatic speaker, great orator

The future is AI assisted programming, where a programming language will be built around what AI is capable of assisting. Right now we call that "static analysis tools", but the problem is the tools are built around the programming languages. When you build a programming language around the limitations of what AI is able to help you with, you will have created a platform of unprecedented productivity.

Watches this video on discipline and standards, then proceeds to 'npm install'

TLDW: In the past, programmers were matured and self-disciplined as they were older(30s-40s). Since 1970s to 1980s, there has been a surge in young programmers(graduates), and this trend has been going on until now. If we do not start having some sort of discipline, such as oath of doctors or lawyers etc, something bad may happen in the future and we (the programmers) will have to bear the consequences. Consequences such as government implementing unnecessary regulations etc..

Thanks, Uncle Bob for making us realize how important and attention oriented ur work is. I will work towards discipline and professionalism.

Why I appreciate Robert Martin? Because he is a humanist among programmers, he talks about morality. And that's really valuable, especially nowadays.

His intro coming out was like someone turning on the lights when I’m trying to code; I mean when I’m trying to sleep.

1:16:10 to 1:16:35 I felt like an Avengers.... ;) Such important and informative video watched after a long time. Good insights of history and the glimpse of the future. Thank you +X/UP for sharing this.... Subscribed

If we consider what has happened with the development of orchestral musical instruments, it is an extreme version of software industry development. Most of these instruments come from 17th to the 19th centuries but have mostly frozen since then. The reason is that it takes many thousands of hours of practise to master any such instrument. Having invested so much time, most musicians are unlikely to take up anything that varies significantly from the standard design they are so invested in. We're stuck, for the most part, with 19th century materials and mechanics! History is littered with brave but broke musicians and designers who have tried to improve on these instruments! (but to be fair, some very minor improvements have been made to some of them). So, the impasse has been resolved to some extent by making instruments suitable to making completely new musics - electric guitars, electronic and then digital synthesisers. The contemporary synth is vastly different to the originals from the 40s and 50s, because they haven't been shackled by looking to emulate the past. (Well, actually there is a movement to use analog synths that has been emerging over the past decade or so. But mostly the industry is looking forward, driven by commercial reasons. So, it seems to me that as the software industry grows and the programmer base gets bigger, there'll be more people programming in C++ and similar languages in the future and their careers are assured!

WOW! Excellent bob! Your clean Code videos are the best to!! Thanks for making me a better programmer

The good stuff: The Agile Manifesto at 1:00:45. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools; Working software over comprehensive documentation; Customer collaboration over contract negotiation; Responding to change over following a plan.

"The number of programmers doubles every 5 years. That means half the programmers have less than 5 years of experience. We live in a state of perpetual inexperience. We cannot escape this. There aren't enough teachers to teach the new people coming in, and so the new people coming in must repeat the mistakes made by everyone else over and over, and there seems to be no cure for this." "Uncle" Bob Martin - "The Future of Programming" - Starting at Minute 50:57

Perfect talk!

A good article on the subject can be found over at Quillette, "Why Women Don’t Code". Take a look at the graphs. Martin is just spouting PC lies. Quote "Pictures help to tell stories and this one drives home the point that even as women were taking a greater share of slots in medicine, law, and the physical sciences, they represented a decreasing percentage of computer science degrees. This is consistent with the idea that women simply chose to pursue other interests, but NPR chose to highlight the suggestion that professors teaching introductory courses were creating courses unfriendly to women." and "In 2013, Psychological Science published a paper that explored this question further entitled “Not Lack of Ability but More Choice: Individual and Gender Differences in Choice of Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.” The authors included Jacquelynne Eccles who is well known for a career spanning decades studying student motivation and gender differences. They concluded that women may choose non-STEM careers because they have academic strengths that many men lack. They found that individuals with high math ability but only moderate verbal ability were the most likely to choose a career in STEM (49 percent) and that this group included more men than women (70 percent men). By contrast, individuals with both high math ability and high verbal ability were less likely to pursue a career in STEM (34 percent) and this group had more women than men (63 percent women). They write that, “Our study provides evidence that it is not lack of ability that causes females to pursue non-STEM careers, but rather the greater likelihood that females with high math ability also have high verbal ability and thus can consider a wider range of occupations.”" The truth isn't PC and if Martin told the truth, he would probably be ostracized from RU-vid. However, the truth is still the truth.

I'm a Microsoft shop full stack developer that started programming in my late 30's, which was ancient. Almost a fossil. I flourished because I fully understood the concepts of projects and knew how do the simple things like, *_show up to work everyday._*

glad that he replied to my message in facebook. A real legend.

The title should be called the "History Of Programming".