This year I have not been able to publish many back-to-basics readings, so I will not close the year with a recap of those. Instead I have a video of a wonderful presentation by Butler Lampson where he talks about the learnings of the past decades that helped him to update his excellent 1983 “Hints for computer system design”.

The presentation was part of the Heidelberg Laureate Forum helt in September of this year. At the Forum many of the Abel, Fields and Turing Laureates held presentations. Our most famous computer scientists like Fernando Carbato, Stephen Cook, Edward Feigenbaum, Juris Hartmanis, John Hopcroft, Alan Kay, Vinton Cerf, etc. were all at the Forum. You can find a list of selected video presentation here

For me the highight was Butler’s presentation on Hints and Principles for Computer Science Design. I include it here as it is absolutely worth watching.