You think there aren't other people equally or more qualified? I mean Casey may be the most visible person with those qualifications - but lack of visibility doesn't imply lack of competence, plenty of brilliant people work in the background..

Feel free to point to anyone doing these deep dives that specifically tackle the lost knowledge of the early decades of computer science and the ideas that have not yet come to fruition despite being extremely old

> Feel free to point to anyone doing these deep dives

Most of this kind of content comes off as relevant/topical but mindless entertainment. This is not a "deep dive" of anything that I could practically apply in my daily work. It feels good to think this content might add value and then to subsequently consume it, but it's effectively junk food.

I used to spend a lot of time watching crap like lex and primagen before it became obvious that these kinds of information channels are not meaningfully enriching despite sounding like they should be to a casual observer.

You are making many assumptions. First of all, he is doing the deep dives by researching all those articles, and of course the resulting presentation will be very superficial. The point is exactly to publish a book to allow the reader to partake in the deep dive. Secondly, nobody said anything about applying that stuff to your daily work.

As much as I like to watch Casey, Prime, etc. on YouTube, they are not going to teach anybody anything. They are just entertainment for software people with a certain viewpoint.

My one data point is that Casey’s handmade hero series, and his immediate mode gui video from way back in 2005, are what introduced me and some friends to an entirely new way to build graphical user interfaces, and I do feel a great appreciation for that. Guys like Ryan Fleury (of RadDbg) and Vjekoslav Krajacic of Filepilot similarly credit Casey with their “radicalization” :) To your point though, it was less about specific technical knowledge conveyed by these videos and more about him evangelizing a high level approach that many folks otherwise wouldn’t have considered

I want more things like that old hand made hero to exist in the world, but, from an interview with Casey himself, it doesn’t pay well enough to justify. Someone with the chops to put that together is in a position to be doing something much better incentivized.

agree regarding primagen but I don’t think that’s a good comparison at all

Casey is a frequent guest on his shows. It's hard to not conflate the two.

Yeah I was a sense that some people would be more into serious technical explorations and not just distanced review of the past (even though it can bring some knowledge).

I watch primeagen mostly for awareness of general tech news items.

Who is also a working engineer (and programmer of the highest caliber) who is in touch with the zeitgeist of engineering.

Me, I do them.

Where do you publish?

Knuth could do them, in theory. The guy was literally there when stuff was happening.

>Feel free to point to anyone doing these deep dives that specifically tackle the lost knowledge of the early decades of computer science

I skimmed through the video because I don't have two hours but there's no lost knowledge in it, he's going over well known papers from Dijkstra, Hoare or Knuth. The paper he bases most of the talk around Knuth's Structured Programming with go to Statements is his most often cited work, there's a very high chance you'll encounter that early in any undergrad course. So the answer to your question is, pretty much at any local uni with a CS course.

The well known papers are not what the talk is about though. The talk is titled "The root of the root..." specifically to go over the specific and incredibly/almost impossible to find citations those well known papers used and built upon to see what historical insights that might have been lost went into how those papers are now interpreted (or as the video argues, misinterpreted).

Even without knowing your specific criteria, #2 on your list must be Alan Kay.

But I'm curious who you think #3 is.

I feel like the comments that are giving you pushback haven't actually listened to Casey before. I agree with you, while opinionated his perspective is very pragmatic and misunderstood. He's done such a great job giving his experience out to the broader world too.

He's entertaining and well spoken. Love it. Not sure the book medium would be the best avenue. My own sweet spot is presentations, live interviews and meetings. I can't write for sh*t, even if I tried. I know.

I'd put Kevlin Henney up there with him. His talk on 1968 alone is pretty amazing

Ehh I love Casey and have learned a ton by watching how he thinks about things in his handmade hero series, but he is fairly narrow minded in his views of dev. Not that theres anything wrong with that, for the kinds of dev he does his approach is very good. But its not generalizable.

Absolutely.

Like I agree with most everything he says and I like to optimise my own software, but for my day to day jobs and contracts it's simply not feasible.

That level of performance and rigor is not what is demanded nor paid or appreciated.

E.g. in Enterprise circles it's still OOP from top to bottom.

Mixed with a tad more functional style due to varying adoption of that paradigm in the languages used by enterprise.

But low level optimizations are not interesting to these customers at all, even though they could help them with some problems.

> not what is demanded nor paid or appreciated.

I suppose it is a matter of what one works on, but that has been consistent in my career.

I have seen many be rewarded for choosing what I would deem intentional, gross negligence. But hey, those devs get work finished faster, and that's all that matters to the non-technical folks.

It’s not a coincidence that Casey and other high profile performance minded people are in game dev. Thats a field where performance is important (or at least a consideration). In web dev or regular enterprise app dev it’s simply not a consideration that needs to be made most of the time.

How is this relevant? I didn't say he should make a book about his teachings about SWE, I said he could compile a comprehensive review of the foundational literature of compsci

Well the comment was about the history of SWE, if you want a comprehensive history you don't focus on the lived memory of one single individual.

Where have I said I want his lived memories?