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Frame from 31 Hamming, Learning to Learn: You and Your Research, 6 June 1995 Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

31 Hamming, Learning to Learn: You and Your Research, 6 June 1995

Hamming on Hamming: Learning to Learn
Lectures
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this lecture4 months2020–2024 score 5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN people recommend it as the capstone of Hamming's course and as career advice about working on important problems.

The final lecture of Richard Hamming's Learning to Learn course, from 1995, based on his well-known talk 'You and Your Research'. It covers how to do important work and build a career.

“It's the last lecture in a wonderful 31-lecture course” (HN, 2021)

2 strong recommendations · 2 recommendations · Lectures

4 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@teddyh Dec 2020 Strongly recommends
on HN thread John Carmack: Career Advice
I prefer Richard Hamming’s series: [this video] “ I have given a talk with this title many times, and it turns out from discussions after the talk I could have just as well have called it "You and Your Engineering Career," or even "You and Your Career." But I left the word "Research" in the title because that is what I have most studied. ”
Hamming on careers and doing research that matters.
@yesenadam Jun 2021 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Things 10x People Do
This reads a lot like Hamming's talk You and Your Research applied to programming. It's the last lecture in a wonderful 31-lecture course, about maths, computers, physics, technology, illustrated through Hamming's life. He'd spend his lunch hours chatting with people at Bell Labs, asking them if they were working on the most important problems in their field, and if not, why not?! [this video]
Hamming asks if you work on the most important problems.
@Tangurena2 Jan 2024 Recommends
on HN thread Ask HN: Good books on philosophy of engineering?
It is a great book, and it includes an amazing essay by him titled You and Your Research [0][1] - which explains why it is important to "always be learning". 0 - [link] 1 - [this video] (lecture version)
Lecture version of Hamming's essay on always learning.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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