# Resource: The Best DevTools Pitches of All Time

*This is a live-updating resource - meaning it will be stickied to our permanent* [*Resources*](https://dx.tips/resources) *page. Please feel free to bookmark, and send in suggestions for updates!*

<details>
	<summary>
		Much of this was sourced from too many folks to thank on [HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31782200) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1537858004435238912).
	</summary>
<p><img src="https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1655508714398/9OSHLICiD.png" alt="image.png" /></p>
<p><img src="https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1655508740226/gFc-cI82G.png" alt="image.png" /></p>
</details>

## The Best of the Best

* **Ruby on Rails**: [15 minute demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzj723LkRJY) by DHH - inspired [Elixir Liveview demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZvmYaFkNJI)
    
* **Docker**: [5 minute demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW9CAH9nSLs) by Solomon Hykes
    
* **Twilio**: [Jeff Lawson short story](https://avc.com/2016/06/best-seed-pitch-ever/), [John Britton 6 min live demo](https://avc.com/2010/08/how-to-pitch-a-product/) - [modern version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGJMt1jFgqg)
    
* **Terraform**: [Armon Dadgar pitching Terraform in 18 minutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h970ZBgKINg) on a whiteboard
    
* *swyx personal pick:* [*The Most Underrated Keynote*](https://dx.tips/the-most-underrated-keynote-ive-ever-seen) *(from CNCF/KubeCon)*
    

## Historical Best

* **Doug Engelbart**'s Mother of All Demos: [wiki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos), [1h 40min video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY)
    
* **Bret Victor**'s Inventing on Principle: [54min talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII)
    
* **Visual Basic 1.0**: [3 minute demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fh_UDQnboRw) by Bill Gates
    
* **Steve Jobs** NeXT demo of interface builder and enterprise object framework ([HN comment](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31783713), [Video](https://youtu.be/rf5o5liZxnA?t=1387)) and of course [the 10 minute iPhone pitch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnrJzXM7a6o)
    
* **Jeff Han** [demo of multitouch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac0E6deG4AU) 6 months before iPhone demo
    

## Platforms

* **AWS**: Jeff Bezos pitching [EC2 in 5 minutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIc-VB-ke9o&t=8s), and [AWS in 40mins](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKfFHuouzA), and Jeff Barr's [We Build Muck So You Don't Have To blogpost](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/we_build_muck_s/) (modern version is "undifferentiated heavy lifting")
    
    * Honorable mention: [12 min Q&A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdQt0hF8jOo&t=355s) (*can we find a better link?*). On S3: "It is hard to come up with a web application that doesn't need to remember things".
        
* **Google Cloud Spanner**: [HN Recollection](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31783153)
    
* **Google BigQuery**: [Felipe Hoffa examples](https://hoffa.medium.com/static-javascript-code-analysis-within-bigquery-ed0e3011732c) (can we find better links?)
    
* **Stripe**: "7 lines of code" (*demo link needed*)
    
* **Netlify**: [blogpost](https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/11/modern-static-website-generators-next-big-thing/) and [40min conf talk](https://vimeo.com/163522126)
    
* **Heroku**: https://12factor.net/ and `git push heroku master`
    
* **Cloudflare**: [TechCrunch Disrupt 2010 16min pitch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeKWeBw1R5A)
    
* **Firebase**: [Googler Recollection](https://twitter.com/_davideast/status/1537864335715860482), [HN Launch](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832877)
    

## OSS

* **React**: [Rethinking Best Practices](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7cQ3mrcKaY&feature=youtu.be) by Pete Hunt.
    
    * Compare with original [Jordan Walke talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GW0rj4sNH2w) - [Pete Hunt's retrospective](https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/the-swyx-mixtape/how-react-got-traction-pete-N0rAdW9lbqo/)
        
    * honorable mention - David Nolen's [Introducing Om](http://swannodette.github.io/2013/12/17/the-future-of-javascript-mvcs/)
        
    * and [Hackflow](http://hackflow.com/blog/2015/03/08/boiling-react-down-to-few-lines-in-jquery/)
        
* **Next.js**: [Guillermo Rauch - 34min talk at React Conf](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evaMpdSiZKk)
    
* **Svelte**: [35min conf talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdNJ3fydeao)
    
* **Node** ([48min JSConf 2010](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztspvPYybIY&feature=youtu.be)) and **Deno** ([26min JSConf 2018](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA))
    
* **Redux**: [30 min React Europe 2015](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsSnOQynTHs)
    
* **GraphQL**: [Zero to GraphQL in 30 Minutes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qbetXi3NMY) - [citation](https://twitter.com/acdlite/status/1594137049237364736)
    
* **Meteor**: [10 minute demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsi0aJ9yr2o)
    
* **MongoDB**: [Great recent pitch from Mark Porter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgCgIz0WYvU) - historical pitch needed (pls recommend)
    
* **Kubernetes**: [the Kelsey Hightower "Tetris" demo - 44mins](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlAXp0-M6SY)
    
* **Kafka**: [the Log blogpost](https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying) by Jay Kreps
    
* **TypeScript**: [just the website](https://www.typescriptlang.org/) in 2022 is convincing to some
    
* **Rust**: "Fearless concurrency", or [the Sawstop safe table saw](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31784253) as Steve Klabnik put it
    
* **MongoDB**: [Good podcast pitch](https://twitter.com/mongodb/status/1192530877148008448)
    

[jQuery landing page](https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/web-design-history/jquery-2006) honorary mention.

## AI/ML

* **OpenAI Codex**: [30 min live demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGUCcjHTmGY) creating a fully functioning game in JavaScript using just plain old english.
    
* **GitHub Copilot**: *definitive demo needed*
    
* **Explosion AI**: [blogpost](https://explosion.ai/blog/supervised-learning-data-collection) - [convincing](https://twitter.com/fishnets88/status/1537871452845768705?s=20&t=4iNqIsqnpE1SC80yna5Pbg)
    

## Editor's picks

Smaller projects that aren't as well known but do something well:

* **Stackblitz**: [6min demo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1-HAN1g4_4), [tweet](https://twitter.com/sulco/status/1537867531511287808?s=20&t=C-LwWGNsmIrQVqOu9U7OfA)
    
* **Anaconda PyScript**: [demo by Peter Wang](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKfkCY7cmBQ&t=425s)
    
* **Remix.run**: [website](https://remix.run/) uses some nice scrollytelling
    

## Developer Adjacent and Misc Demo Inspiration

* Developer Adjacent:
    
    * **Drew Houston**' s [Dropbox demo](https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/19/dropbox-minimal-viable-product/)
        
    * **Todd McKinnon**'s [Why I'm Not Crazy](https://www.bvp.com/atlas/okta-ceo-todd-mckinnon-on-powering-through-your-darkest-days-until-finally-the-category-is-born) presentation for Okta
        
    * [Photosynth TED talk demo](https://www.ted.com/talks/blaise_aguera_y_arcas_how_photosynth_can_connect_the_world_s_images)
        
* Idea Pitches:
    
    * **CQRS and Event Sourcing** - [1h talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHGkaShoyNs), [HN citation](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31783857)
        
    * **Unix Chainsaw** by [Gary Bernhardt](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQnyApKysg4)
        
* **Light Table**: [HN](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31782449)
    
* Let's Encrypt https://twitter.com/mbleigh/status/1537866383710511104
    
* Figwheel-Clojurescript https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-kj2qwJa\_E&t=598s
    
* [Your pitch should not be about you](https://invertedpassion.com/your-30-second-pitch-shouldnt-be-about-you/)