I’ve written a few times about Vivek Haldar’s Read A Paper videos. They’re vlogs that “read” a seminal paper in Computer Science. They’re really great. If I’ve already read the paper, that particular vlog serves to remind me of the details. If I haven’t read the paper, the vlog familiarizes me with the content and perhaps inspires me to read it on my own. If you don’t like actually reading papers, the series is a painless way to get many of the same benefits you would from reading them.
In a (regular) post, Haldar explains why he is vlogging and what he wants to accomplish. It’s a nice adjunct to the videos themselves. One of the things he said really resonated with me. He has, he says, deep misgivings about popular coverage of technology. We’ve all experienced that. Often, despite knowing better, we’re attracted by some click-baity headline about technology and discover that the story behind it is sensationalized, misrepresents the actual situation, or is flat out wrong. The only solution, Haldar says, is to read the source documents to get the real story.
Of course, that can be hard—or even impossible if it concerns a field of which we have no knowledge—so Haldar is trying to make reading some of the important papers in our field accessible by helping us through them. Dijkstra’s “Go To Statement Considered Harmful” paper is a good example: the advice to avoid gotos has become received wisdom but if you haven’t read the paper you won’t know his arguments and understand when using a goto is appropriate. Haldar’s video on the paper is an easy way to become conversant with Dijkstra’s arguments.
The videos are short and definitely worth watching when you have a few minutes.