Highlights
In no particular order…
Programming’s Greatest Mistakes
An ever-evolving look at some of the mistakes in software engineering over the years that have led to explosions, bankruptcies, world-wide Windows outages, or in one case just a severe telling-off from my boss :)
How JavaScript Happened
A history of programming languages, but limited to the ones that introduced features, concepts or syntax that led to or influenced JavaScript.
The Albatross Project
The opposite of The Phoenix Project, basically. I’ve started doing it as a one-person play now, which is a lot of fun.
The Worst Programming Language Ever
People always ask “Is it JavaScript?” but this is so much worse. It takes all the bizarre and inexplicable design decisions from a wide range of languages and munges them all together in one unusable monstrosity. Also leaves time at the end for audience members to share their own ideas (and has an amazing comment section on YouTube).
How Simple Is “As Simple As Possible”
I do also do (mostly) serious talks sometimes. This one is about unnecessary complexity in software architecture and development, from microservices (do you really need them) to front-end JavaScript frameworks (do they really need to be 16 times the size of the original Quake?).
My Speaking Journey
I have done a lot of talks over the last 15 years, from local user groups to international conferences. Here’s how I got to where I am.
In the 90s (yes, I’m old) I did a bit of stand-up comedy, from open spots in pubs to the Edinburgh Fringe, eventually winning the Jongleurs/Times Metro New Act of the Year competition in 1999 and going professional for a couple of years. Bits of being funny for a living were fun, but a lot of bits weren’t, and I eventually ended up back in the software engineering world (although I did get to work as a writer for a BBC comedy show and I have the IMDb entry to prove it).
The urge to get up on stage and show off never really went away though, so when I discovered user groups and meetups and conferences I had to get up there and talk about something. My first talk was Functional Alchemy and was about some of the interesting and extremely hacky things you could do with the functional features in C# 3.0. I did it at DDD Southwest (which is still going) in 2011, and then DDD Reading at the Microsoft campus (which is sadly no more afaict). In Reading, a certain Jon Skeet was in the audience and really enjoyed himself; I think he lasted about 15 minutes before joining in and suggesting things. We ended up pairing on a couple of ideas after the talk and I have to admit, I was more than a little starstruck.
Jon had also been tweeting during the talk, so I came out to find a couple of hundred new Twitter followers (remember Twitter?), which was nice. And then he recommended me to a couple of international conferences, Øredev and Code Mash, giving me a welcome boost into the wider speaking circuit. At Øredev I met Greg Young and mentioned having done stand-up, and he invited me to do a talk at Build Stuff but also asked me to MC the attendee party: tell some jokes, do some crowd work…
“What language do you use?”
“Ruby.”
“I’m sorry?”
“RUBY.”
“No, I heard what you said, I’m just sorry.”
…and introduce the musical acts, which chance I leapt at. That was a fun night.
There was a closing keynote that year, I forget the details, but it was a very dry, very academic talk and after three days of the kind of hardcore technical content you get at Build Stuff, it was tough going for the audience. At some point, somebody tweeted at Greg “Next year let Rendle do the closing keynote”; he asked if I would do something funny and I said “hell yes” and spent a year trying to think of something technical and funny. Eventually I came up with The Worst Programming Language Ever, which has been preserved for posterity on InfoQ.
That talk went very well and I started getting invited to do it, and any others I could come up with, at other conferences, and to build a bit of a reputation for them. Fast-forward to today and I’m practically the resident “locknote” speaker for the NDC conferences, and get invited to speak at other events outside of my .NET bubble, which is amazing. I’m incredibly grateful to be in this position, and very aware of the privilege and luck that (along with a lot of hard work) has led me to this point.
Anyway, that’s the story so far. If you’re interested in getting into speaking I’m always happy to share whatever I’ve learned along this journey. You can reach out on LinkedIn or Bluesky, say hi, and ask for advice or help with the speaking itself, writing abstracts, or anything else.