The Future of Programming

An interesting talk given in 2013 but the presenter, Brett Victor, pretends as if it was 1973. It shows how things we would not have wanted to happen in computers have happened.

The thesis of the talk, however, revolves around this idea: if you’re constrained by believing you know what you’re doing and you know what programming is, then you’ll be unable to see any adjacent ideas that might actually be better than the ones we have now.

The most dangerous thought you can have as a creative person is to think that you know what you’re doing. Because once you think you know what you’re doing, you stop looking around for other ways of doing things and you stop being able to see other ways of doing things. You become blind…

You have to say to yourself, “I don't know what I’m doing.”…Once you truly believe that, then you’re free and you can think anything.