Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (2007) | Hacker News Reader

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (2007)

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80 pointsRed_Tarsius11 comments

As an EE undergrad at UVa in the early 90s, I was fascinated by all things virtual reality. Someone suggested I go meet with this rising star prof, Randy Pausch, who was doing some very interesting work in the field. I was fortunate to hang out with him and his grad students for about a semester, getting exposed to 3D graphics and 3D paint programs, 3D spaces, the VPL glove, SGI machines. It was, for lack of a better word, magical. Many years later, I heard about the last lecture and was sad to hear it was the very same prof I knew. I realized how many of the ideas and technologies I was exposed to back then had become very real many years later.

If you like the lecture or/and the book, you'll probably want to read the transcript for the session he did on time management http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Randy/TMenglishTranscript...

There is also a video of that lecture too - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTugjssqOT0

Still one of my favorite lectures I've watched online of all time. Highly recommend the book as well for those that haven't read it.

I found The Last Lecture while looking for a motivational book to gift my brother. Do you think a 14yo could appreciate Randy's writings? I'd like to instill him with a sense of perseverance, responsibility and long-term vision.

Similiar to other posters, I read this book in middle school and found it a great inspiration then.

I actually at the time got really big in to Alice[1] a gui based programming environment Pausch pioneered and it led to a lot of my earlier computing experiences.

I'd highly recommend the book for any young teen as it paints an incredibly optimistic picture of the world, which is something to be said when you consider Pausch had terminal cancer.

In all honesty to this day Pausch remains one of my greatest inspirations.

[1]: http://www.alice.org/index.php

I read this book after my mom suggested it to me in 8th grade (14 years old!) and it was the reason I ended up setting my sights on CMU for college. I know that a 14yo could appreciate it.

Absolutely! I don't want to spoil it for others that may not have seen or read it yet, but you know the ending and why he wrote it.

While he may not fully understand everything (the lessons, not the words), this is the kind of book that I still go back and read every couple of years and still try to pick up something new each time. I'm sure he can pick up things that are relevant to him today and still find new lessons for years to come.

Here is my summary of his book on the same lecture: https://ashishb.net/book-summary/book-summary-the-last-lectu...

Thanks for your many book summaries. Love those. Here's another good list: https://sivers.org/book

Definitely one of my favorite talks of all time.

Thanks for reminding me to rewatch this again...

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