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Casey Muratori – The Big OOPs: Anatomy of a Thirty-five-year Mistake – BSC 2025

Better Software Conference · talk · Watch on YouTube

Software architecture & designSoftware performance & optimizationGame programming & engines

What it is

Casey Muratori's two-hour talk tracing the history of object-oriented programming back to the 1960s and examining how its ideas, and later entity component systems, came about. It is followed by a Q&A.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN commenters recommend it for its source-based history of OOP, though some dispute its account of Alan Kay.

  • 11 people recommended it
  • 8 different months
  • 2 strong recommendations
  • first 2025, last 2026

What HN commenters said

  1. “which really is hunting back and back for the cosmogenesis of objects, and covers so much terrain.”

    Hunts for origins of objects and covers much terrain

    jauntywundrkind, 2025-11 · Strong recommendation · in “Fifty Shades of OOP”

  2. “I can only recommend the big OOPS video”

    Recommended for understanding OOP's conflated aspects

    fmjrey, 2025-11 · Strong recommendation · in “Fifty Shades of OOP”

  3. “I found this talk to be great.”

    History of OOP and early ideas behind ECS

    abetusk, 2025-07 · Recommendation · in “The Big Oops: Anatomy of a Thirty-Five-Year Mistake [video]”

  4. “There's a really good talk about the history of OOP going back to the early 60s”

    History of OOP back to the 1960s debunking the myth

    ndiddy, 2025-07 · Recommendation · in “Java was not underhyped in 1997 (2021)”

  5. “You might also want to watch Casey's great talk on the history of OOP”

    History of OOP

    hiker, 2025-08 · Recommendation · in “Object-oriented design patterns in C and kernel development”

  6. “it's a good overview for people without a computer science background.”

    Good overview for those without a CS background

    OhMeadhbh, 2025-09 · Recommendation · in “How to stop functional programming (2016)”

  7. “Muratori traced the history of OOP to the original documents.”

    Traces OOP history to original documents

    rawgabbit, 2025-11 · Recommendation · in “Fifty Shades of OOP”

  8. “Where the different ideas in OOP came from, how they came together through which programming languages, who was working on what, and when, and why. It's interesting.”

    Traces where OOP ideas came from and who

    jodrellblank, 2025-12 · Recommendation · in “Your job is to deliver code you have proven to work”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: oop, casey muratori, entity component system, programming history, software design

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