I ran into this in my notes again and I wonder if it's what inspired xkcd to do upgoer.
I wouldn't call it a good programming talk (Or, rather, it's good in abstract), and it's very dated in it's 90s ideas of gender
but the 'illustrating how a language is built, by building up the english language as you tell the story of doing it' is one of those things that's pretty interesting storytelling technique from a guy who looks incredibly bland, talking about the world's most bland language, The Java® Programming Language™ circa 1998.
note: this is not Basic English, which upgoer is based on. But does mention it.
Growing a Language, Guy Steele (Sun Microsystems), ACM OOPSLA, 1998
Today I learned that there's a better rip of this now, apparently uploaded by the Computer History Museum three years ago:
The video track is higher quality and the dropouts that the old rip had every few minutes are fixed.