The Art of Code - Dylan Beattie
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- Published on Feb 25, 2020
- Software and technology has changed every aspect of the world we live in. At one extreme are the ‘mission critical’ applications - the code that runs our banks, our hospitals, our airports and phone networks. Then there’s the code we all use every day to browse the web, watch movies, create spreadsheets… not quite so critical, but still code that solves problems and delivers services.
But what about the code that only exists because somebody wanted to write it? Code created just to make people smile, laugh, maybe even dance? Maybe even code that does nothing at all, created just to see if it was possible?
Join Dylan Beattie - programmer, musician, and creator of the Rockstar programming language - for an entertaining look at the art of code. We’ll look at the origins of programming as an art form, from Conway's Game of Life to the 1970s demoscene and the earliest Obfuscated C competitions. We’ll talk about esoteric languages and quines - how DO you create a program that prints its own source code? We’ll look at quine relays, code golf and generative art, and we’ll explore the phenomenon of live coding as performance - from the pioneers of electronic music to modern algoraves and live coding platforms like Sonic Pi.
Check out more of our talks, courses, and conferences in the following links:
ndcconferences.com/
ndc-london.com/ 
Science & Technology
This guy is a great orator/storyteller/and probably DnD master
he speaks too fast, after a while headache is coming...
@E.coli Rimmer
@Michael McNeil No.
you see that hair? 100% DnD master energy
Omg thought the same
In the early 1980's i created many programs on a TI-59 programmable calculator that often took hours or even days to complete. I then put an AM radio receiver close to the calculator, and by carefully tuning it, I was able to listen to the electronic "music" of calculation, and I could tell, just by hearing, in which loop the program was looping into, and how far it was from achieving its final task. That was a truly artistic moment.
@Garry Iglesias Nahhhh it's not lost, we're just at a point that it's just become too complex for the average person to pick up a piece of electronic equipment and accomplish unique creative things with it.
@Garry Iglesias nah its still all over the place. Coding just isn't a new thing anymore and super nerds aren't the only ones doing it.
That's the nerdiest shit I've ever heard... Fucking amazing!!
@Sol Gongola He didnt mean sourcecode, he meant the source from which you got the information of someone writing the program
@Michele Diblasi A little harsh don't you think? Sure, some people can't optimize for squat, but some tasks just inherently take time. I remember trying to do some volumetric light transport on my 33mhz i486 back in the day, and having to wait half an hour for a single pass. Maybe it was just a very ambitious project? We don't know.
I've never written a single word of code in my life and was absolutely enthralled by this from start to finish. Brilliant, thank you.
100% agree. Never coded, really want too
@Amon Duul Gracias por compartir más BOOKS, THANKS from México.
@Amon Duul Links are dead
Indeed, this guy is my hero lol
I started to learn to code 6 months ago, and I'm getting more and more surprised by what computers and coders can do in general. This was an amazing watch!
"Taking lightning and sticking it in a rock until it learns to think" has to be the single greatest description of computers ever. Bravo to the orator!
Computers are the fastest stupids that we know!
This also now sounds like it could be a rockstar program :P
Haha, was comming in the comment section to write this also, glad I'm not the only one who likes this description.
but it doesn't think.
sit down pls
Personal bookmarks shared :
A timeline :
3:47 contrast 4:44 game of life 7:00 grow 10:00 butterfly effect 11:00 complex (breadcrumbs : quaternions) 12:04 ? diagram 14:15 Mandelbrot 16:38 (always different) but self similar 17:48 Tron 18:25 Jurassic Park 18:40 character 19:20 Friends avatars 19:50 clouds shapes patterns CNN 20:45 dog vs muffin 21:20 Deep Dreaming 22:15 ART 22:45 Flutter dev 23:00 generative art (breadcrumbs : generative programming) 24:59 Knuth books (breadcrumbs : Mathematica) 25:45 Obfuscated CLI Flappy Bird 27:12 game in URL 27:30 JS 27:50 Obfuscated contest (breadcrumbs : virus) source code recursion C# 27:37 string templating (breadcrumbs : grammar ... FSM) 30:34 HTML Quine 32:30 prints itself 32:40 C 33:00 Ruby 33:50 Py Perl ... PolyQuine 34:22 Ada ... Uroboros Quine language 35:45 fractal text 36:35 Github Actions 36:50 Shakespear text Hello World ! 38:06 Whitespace 38:36 Souffle in Chef (breadcrumbs : CSP + COP) 2 domains 39:47 Piet (mix) cross rules 16 bit art Hello World 42:30 snowflake processing (never repeated anywhere) 43:03 Sonic Pi music language (breadcrumbs : CCRMA ) live loop (breadcrumbs : Pharo) 46:15 live coding 46:40 HE Rockstar programming (words songs) : rock song compiled to something 48:42 Flutter 49:02 Json 50:29 Pi ex 51:10 arithmetic 52:20 Github refs 53:10 Issues fix requests 54:36 Rockstar in JS 55:12 Logo 55:50 guitar song live demo
# Just converted in a vertical format
Personal bookmarks shared :
A timeline :
3:47 contrast
4:44 game of life
7:00 grow
10:00 butterfly effect
11:00 complex (breadcrumbs : quaternions)
12:04 ? diagram
14:15 Mandelbrot
16:38 (always different) but self similar
17:48 Tron
18:25 Jurassic Park
18:40 character
19:20 Friends avatars
19:50 clouds shapes patterns CNN
20:45 dog vs muffin
21:20 Deep Dreaming
22:15 ART
22:45 Flutter dev
23:00 generative art (breadcrumbs : generative programming)
24:59 Knuth books (breadcrumbs : Mathematica)
25:45 Obfuscated CLI Flappy Bird
27:12 game in URL
27:30 JS
27:50 Obfuscated contest (breadcrumbs : virus) source code recursion C#
27:37 string templating (breadcrumbs : grammar ... FSM)
30:34 HTML Quine
32:30 prints itself
32:40 C 33:00 Ruby
33:50 Py Perl ... PolyQuine
34:22 Ada ... Uroboros Quine language
35:45 fractal text
36:35 Github Actions
36:50 Shakespear text Hello World !
38:06 Whitespace
38:36 Souffle in Chef (breadcrumbs : CSP + COP) 2 domains
39:47 Piet (mix) cross rules 16 bit art Hello World
42:30 snowflake processing (never repeated anywhere)
43:03 Sonic Pi music language (breadcrumbs : CCRMA ) live loop (breadcrumbs : Pharo)
46:15 live coding
46:40 HE Rockstar programming (words songs) : rock song compiled to something
48:42 Flutter
49:02 Json
50:29 Pi ex
51:10 arithmetic
52:20 GitHub refs
53:10 Issues fix requests
54:36 Rockstar in JS
55:12 Logo
55:50 guitar song live demo
Does this compile in rockstar?
Petition to change "guitar song live demo" to "demonstration he is a sick dude"
@Bruce McCarthy You are welcome, hope it is useful !
This video got me into programming again. Halfway into the first year of computer science college, loving it.
Thank you.
Please make physics theory easier Mr. Newton 😢
Thank you Newton, please write the next great physics engine for us.
god on you isaac! maybe you can program a physics engine for your laws of motion
This was beautiful! You had me smiling at many different parts of this video from the beauty of combining math, code, and art.
Complexity from simplicity
4:39 Game of life
9:58 Mandelbrot set
Art from code
17:45 Deep dream
22:07 Using software to create art
Code as art
24:48 Artistic (obfuscated) code
27:49 Quines (programs which print their own source code)
36:40 Esoteric coding languages
41:33 Code to sound languages
46:37 The Rockstar language
This lecture will never get old. I've watched it 4 to 5 times in past 1 year. Every time I see it, it entertains like a movie and yet has the ability to impart knowledge!
So have I, it's executed incredibly well.
Fantastic! Can only appreciate the tons of work that went into preparing the presentation. I distinctly remember the buzz getting my first program to work (1962 using FORTRAN). Now, 58 years later, just got the same buzz programming a simple game in C#. BTW - Donald Knuth "The Art of Programming" - totally brilliant books.
Fabulous! I started professionally in Fortran in 1963 and ended up as the CIO of two federal departments. He captures the joy and power of coding!
I think the coding presentation was just an excuse to bring his guitar playing skills into action. BRAVO!
That's the first Bill and Ted movie guitar too..
This was an amazing talk. Well put together, full of surprises, full of languages I forgot existed. Well done!
if you are a bit into programming, math and some philosophy, this young man will gift you an hour that you will not compare to anything in your life. Salute you Dylan. My deepest respects.
R eksik kalmış
"If you are a bit..."
I don't know if that was intentional, but I sure laughed at that more than I should
I'm not into any of those and I am blown away here.
@hudson 2134AI310
Now, this is one of the best presentations I've listened to in a while. What an amazing speaker...was hooked in at every minute!
You know if every single university professor made these kind of lectures I would be in uni forever.
What a great and inspiring talk. Absolutely loved it.
best programming video. TheXvid has been recommending me this for like half a year and here I am.
haha, same here
Same
Relatable
@Paulo josé Unironically? yes
me too man
29:00 A program that prints its own source code reminded me of my first project in Programming 101 in college about 40 years ago. The project was to use Apple Basic on an Apple II to write a program and document the program in a flowchart. I thought flowcharting was dumb so I wrote a program that would create a flowchart of itself. Self documenting. Professor was a little pissed.
Flowcharting was replaced with adding comments as programs became way too complex to make flowcharting useful. Add comments were largely replace with the reality that comments often mismatch code as code is changed and comments remain. But I still use a lot of comments but mostly as brainstorming.
There is this global disdain for COBOL, but there are COBOL programs that are still running, basically untouched for over 40 years. If a programmer is careful with their variable names (spending enough time in the Data Division), COBOL can be essentially self-documenting, saving an extra step. I have always believed in paragraph documentation, where you write a paragraph describing what a procedure or block of code is intended to do and then add in descriptions of any particularly tricky techniques that are used therein. Line by line comments are essentially useless to any but the totally clueless and if they are that clueless, they don't belong in there in any case.
Excellent, I really enjoyed this talk, Im been a programmer for 30 years and I've learned a whole lot today! Thanks
This is absolutely amazing! Thanks for sharing.
This is why we code. Thanks Dylan! Rock on 🤘
I can't believe the audience wasn't floored by Conway's Game of Life running in a computer made in Conway's Game of LIfe
It's one of those things that gives me goosebumps every time.
A lot of people have seen it before, but it still took my breath away
Ted talks are heavily skewed towards the type of audience members that have seen the whole running an instance of Life in an instance of Life thing before.
There was actually a really oblique reference to it on the PBS Physics youtube videos - one of the ones on the subject of entropy I think. It was actually kind of hilarious but you need a British accent to pull it off.
Engineers aren't really the most expressive bunch.
@#define SIGINT 2 That or they saw it coming anyway because they were thinking "as above, so below" or in this case "as within, so beyond"
What a speech! 👏🏻 Thank you Dylan. You made my day😁
Oh my god that's brilliant, nice talk/performance/presentation Dylan Beattie!
Dylan is awesome! What an entertaining talk and awesome ending that really drives the point in.
Mind Blown! Thank you for this talk. I found this looking for information about how to code...how to make what I wanted to make...so congrats on an amazing distraction lol. No but seriously I learned a lot that I didn't know about before. Now back to figuring out the best way to make my own custom roulette wheel, because apparently the url created when i put it into wheel decider is too large.
6 years of university studies and another 6 years of practical computer development and I have never seen many of the things shown in this video. I have just shared it everywhere. Amazing content.
@Melon UskAfter reflection I can agree with you. There wasn't really any discussion of anything more than designing a language and interpreters, nothing about compiler design. I only brought up the polyquine, not because of any interest in the computer science of it but more the determination and design. Again, my comment was misplaced. I do think that you could use with understanding you're not the tell all and that everyone else you don't immediately understand is a moron. In fact, you know very little about me, and my background, don't feel so self-conscious
@TheXarus The video does not teach you how to make compilers, or polyquines, or anything, you might copy his code but then it is not your "polyquine" is it? imagine someone watched some minutephysics vid then claimed they are now a physicist and the ideas in the vid are not accessible to highschoolers lol
And yes high schoolers can understand the ideas in this video. In fact the polyquines with the flashy syntax looks exactly like what would impress high schoolers. Though I would try to be less pretentious and first tell my students a computer program that doesnt run forever can be viewed as a computable function, and that function has a fixed point by the recursion theorem that they learned from logic, yes, even when the program is composition of multiple programs of different languages...
Try to find one idea in this video that can't be explained with naive set theory and logic. You are just one of those people who watch cool pop sci video to feel 'complex' and never actually understand the concepts.
@Melon Usk Hmmmm... teaching high schoolers to make 100 language poly-quines and compilers. I think you don't really understand the complexity of what you're talking about either
@Melon Usk You talk like a teacher from the cold war... Screw industry... You talk like your school taught you everything about industry instead of these... Maybe they did; Idk but I know they didn't teach "anything" at all to us so yeah. Your argument can only be valid given that schools actually teach people about then "practical" side of things.
On top of that I think that industry matters less in the long run tbh. Nobody invented something or made a method to make an industry out of it. Hobby projects and useless art works lit the fuse.
The ideas in the video can be taught to high school students after they learn a bit of set theory and logic. They are basically popsci for computational science. Knowing these things from school or from self studying isn't really an achievement, I'd say it's less demanding and less practical than an introductory discrete math at the average university. Things like game of life make you sound smart if you mention them to lay people, that's about it. Interestingly it's often the educated person who can see the limitation of their understanding while the uneducated person knows a bit of popsci and thinks college is worthless 😂
I was loosing my will to code but I am inspired now. Great, great talk. Thank you 🙏
Absolutely brilliant! Well done.
"The thrill has never gone away."
Amen brother.
That was simply brilliant on every level.
*Complexity from simplicity*
4:39 Game of life
9:58 Mandelbrot set
*Art from code*
17:45 Deep dream
22:07 Using software to create art
*Code as art*
24:48 Artistic (obfuscated) code
27:49 Quines (programs which print their own source code)
36:40 Esoteric coding languages
41:33 Code to sound languages
46:37 The Rockstar language
Deep dream is creepy AF
Thank you so much.
Not all heroes wear capes 🖖🏽
My thumb loves your index.
thanx
That was so much fun to watch, thank you for sharing!
Just as entertaining the second time around as it was the first time! Love it. Rock on Dylan ... You're a true Rockstar Dev!
this is one of the best talks i've ever seen. DEAR GOD the genius of this man and other coders
Devotion and dedication to his craft is inspiring
This is the most epic stuff I have ever seen in youtube! A perfect amalgamation of Science, Math, Art, Literature, Technology and Programming!
A whole hour of absolute joy. This man is brilliant!
I have zero coding skills, but he really made it fascinating to listen to! Well done.
This is one of the best presented talks i have seen so far. Great job! Great showmanship. I learned, i laughed, i enjoyed! Thank you
This is not a talk it's a performance.
Every talk is a performance. It's just that most of them are really bad.
I agree
it surely is !
Isn't a talk always a performance regardless?
This must be the most epic talk I've ever seen!
One of the best talks I've watched.
I watch it again every now and then.
Dude this talk was sick.
I'm a comp sci noob but this was inspiring and really interesting!
What a talk! What a legend! Lets make more esoteric languages, for the better future!
Absolute legend! Thank you for that presentation !
this dude really sang in his own programming language
@Florian March he didn't explain it because it's a very famous beginner programming challenge, "FizzBuzz."
It's a program that takes a number and prints out a list from 1 to that number. But if a number is divisible by 3, it's replaced with "Fizz." If divisible by 5, "Buzz." Divisible by both 3 and 5, "FizzBuzz."
so FizzBuzz(15) would give:
1 2 Fizz 4 Buzz Fizz 7 8 9 Buzz 11 Fizz 13 14 FizzBuzz
@tubezcome c
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I would applaud this guy standing. He deserved it. It was the MOST entertaining lecture about coding... and the sond at the end... MAAAAN
@tubez 🤔🤔
Ko
@Dylan Beattie Where's the fun in that ? x'] I enjoyed transpiling from the parse tree in the video directly haha, and i wanted to compare it to a simple language like JS. But thanks for the link! And again, amazing talk of course!
Easily one of the best talks I've heard, I keep inadvertently coming back at it, and I enjoy it every single time
Captivating from start to end. Best 1 hour of my time today, zero regrets
I come back a rematch this every few months because it's one of the greatest pieces of art and code ever
Gorgeous, I really enjoyed every second, worth paying attention.
This will be a classic talk in the years to come: thought provoking, informative, funny stuff being superbly delivered.
Fully Agreed, No Doubt.
@Angelo DeLuca yeah me too I am shocked how one hour flew by.
I absolutely love it!
I never thought I'd watch the whole thing, but here I am. This was excellent!
This has become my all-time favourite youtube video. Thanks a million!
Fantastic presentation! Congratulations and have my admiration
24:48 👏👏 exactly what I was envisioning for code. Glad someone else finally moving in that direction.
I already admired coders for their monkish work I enjoy the results of every day but seeing it like this I was watching this with a lot of attention and found it captivating.
"I got hooked because I made the computer do what I wanted"
The exact reason I got hooked on coding myself. The unrecognized power behind just a keyboard is absolutely amazing in my opinion.
@Ian Miles tell me where you are, i'll come to where you're at
@Explosivo55 Time to leave the basement.
the main reason i love doing code is i use my very own fingers tapping keys creating words in a sequence - the words i write are code to things that people use on a daily. my systems are used by hundreds of people (trying to avoid boasting, just making an example) every month and i wrote the code to those systems entirely on my own.
there is some unspoken power to making stuff do what you want them to do with your own hands.
EDIT: i started doing code at about 9, about two years after i had learnt how to speak my native language. ever since then i've just been hooked on writing stuff with my own hands. it has feelings of accomplishment, success and happiness associated with it
@YaHu I think by that time, computers will be the least of your worries. Also why ww3, there's a lot more we can choose from especially right now. Like global warming or apocalyptic capitalism, which are both as imminent as ww3 x'].
Note: 95% are probably gonna ask "wtf is apocalyptic capitalism". Here's a pretty nice way to put it : climateandcapitalism.com/2014/04/13/avoiding-capitalist-apocalypse/
"I'm not a very spiritual person, but I do love playing computer games" great quote right there
Wow, This was such an entertaining and yet educational presentation!
The most interesting video about programming I've seen in some time. Great stuff.
I love how you can hear the passion and fascination of the person in the crowd with the distinct laugh.
It makes me happy. It's how I feel about music theory, so I can relate.
When you want to become a rockstar but your mom makes you learn programming.
I had been saving most of my paper route money, except that well spent at the video arcades(Why didn't BACH right an Ode or Fugue to the smell of Ozone in the arcade?) and on the odd walkman or Atari cartridge, to buy an APPLE ][+ with 16K RAM and my folks wouldn't let me buy it in 6th grade 1979 because it was a waste of money. That is why Elon Musk is taking humanity to Mars instead of me. It's all up to him now. My generation had the most brain dead adults. Why would anybody need to make you learn programming? IT was so beyond FUN and NEET and AMAZING.. The beginning of a new age and we were right there and the brain dead adults didn't know how to do it. Nothing came close to the mega neeto emotions.. well until chix in school started getting all curvy.
ROFL!
@Daniel Anthony juwon but depending where in England you live, you may also say "mam" instead of mom or mum.
@srtghfnbfg No. Perfection must be achieved and maintained.
@Jagielski Gaming lol. Tomayto, Tomahto. This is YT's comment section, he can say mum or mom even if he's british, sri lankan, or indian =v
#GrammarNazi
I'm happy i found this today, i've been struggling to find motivation in code lately but this was the spark i needed thank you
I often have doubts about what i am programming, but this speech gave me confidence to program just what i like, whether it's silly or not.
It's a creative endeavor as much as it is anything else. There's absolutely no reason not to treat it as such. It can be an outlet like any other.
Insane work, you learned me a lot and by a funny way
Thank you. A real treat. Made me laugh during these trying times.
ok, I'll need to re-watch this several times, one of the most fascinating thing I've seen on youtube in this age of entertainment consumerism.
This is amazing. I can rarely watch long hour videos without feeling like too much time has happened. I watched this like a regular ten minutes video.
An hour of education and contemplation on an interesting topic isn't an hour wasted. Most videos don't check those boxes.
when TheXvid recommended this to me I had no clue what this video possibly could've been about, and I also had no clue that watching this 1 hour video to the end definitely wouldn't feel like 1 hour at all :o
I read your message and I had to verify for myself because it really didn't feel like an hour at all!
OMG why are you here lol I watch your vids
Loved it brilliant !! I am totally amazed and taken by this
One of the best talks i've ever seen, after delivering a flawless presentation like that for almost an hour of course you deserve our indulgence at the end
Wow! I am amazed by the creativity and the art behind almost everything, not just coding. I am in shock and amazed, great content!
This was legendary! amazing stage presence...
I really did not expect a performance at the end, but nevertheless i thoroughly enjoyed it.
This man has got to be the best presenter in the IT sector
This must be the most epic talk I've ever seen!
It's def up there. Lots of clever sh*t.
He cranked it up to 11.
Even his voice also!
and the most metal!
me too
probably my favorite part of this is when people use obscenely small amounts of disk space to do obscenely complex things... like the chess example.
That was just amazing. I felt like I was watching a movie.
mind boggling things said, informed and performed .. Cheers
The most amazing talk I ever seen. I wish if every computerphiles could see this
TED speakers could learn a thing or two from this presentation.
The only good TED talk ever made is GG Allin in 1989
I'm pretty sure that TED Talks have much more restrictive time options, compared to this talk.
@Marcial Abrahantes agreed.
The good TED talks are a bit more high level yet more inspirational than this talk.
But I'd say that's only around ~50.
This talk is beautifully made and practical, but it doesn't apply to the same scope that Ted talks are supposed to
@oisin678 Gotta reinforce survivorship bias or the highschool -> uni -> burgerflipper with lifelong debt chain breaks down as people realise not everybody can be a CEO
If you are ever going to speak in a conference where Dylan is also speaking, make sure you don't get scheduled after him. Absolutely mind blowing YT video. Best 1:00:48 ever spent on You Tube.
Amazing..... I loved every part of this mad session. loved the song the most :)
I'm so happy to find people like this among the net.
Dang introvert creatives gotta stop hiding behind their screens and show the world their work so us plebs can collab with them.
My favourite talk I’ve found on the internet. What a brilliant man. What a brilliant world we live in.
Wonderful talk! I was directed here after I uploaded a video about my Python programs I made lol.
I just can't wait to see where we are in 20 years!
Me and my best friend got together for a week to work on our year end projects and wasted half the week by playing with Winamp visualization studio and came up with some strange equations, which made really great animations and images. Best procrastination adhd episode i've ever had :)
Mind blowing, love it.
i was expecting another one of those boring talks, but he managed to keep it really interesting, and bring new things to the table even for the topics i already knew about. but then it turned to 11 at the end. amazing
One of the best tech talks in history.
Inspring talk. I am happy to know coding and to be into music.
I'm not even a programmer and that was amazing!!!
This is the freakiest programming speech I've seen so far lol
I love it!
I was unaware they made Conway's game of life out of Conway's game of life. Blown away at like 10 minutes in.
Same!
@DJ TBOne have you heard of the code that writes itself through 128 languages? yeah, that's pretty cool.
Edit: nevermind, he did reference it
Conway's RIP video of ElJj thexvid.com/video/9Hpy6MKM-J8/video.html in FRENCH, sorry if you don't speak it, (there might be subtitles, or request them if you need them) is a must seen about the Game of Life and some (about 10) of Conway's majors mathematical ideas .
Programs writing programs and their own source codes, Codeception. We must go deeper.
That was pretty astounding.
why can't my teacher be this guy lmao.
he's awesome!
31:42 About ioccc and quines, there was an entry in the early 2000s, with source code formatted in a Japanese(?) character. That when complex and printed another c program laid out a a character, and the third one had the original source code as output.
I was and am still completely baffled by that one.
If someone knows which entry it was, I'd love to see it again.
Ok, that 128 long poly Quine beats all of that. What a creation!
I know absolutely zero about coding. No idea how this ended up in my suggestions. But one of the BEST talks ever. Fantastic job Dylan!
This video was very inspiring. I'm surprised what i can do with code.
Thank you.
Started watching this with "oh, another hour talk that could be condensed into 5 minutes of specifics". Quickly changed my mind. Definetly worth watching.
Best lecture ever... complete with a final rock and roll close out