TITLE: Off to StrangeLoop
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 24, 2015  9:04 PM
DESC: 
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StrangeLoop 2015 starts tomorrow, and after a year's hiatus, I'm
back.  The
<A HREF="http://www.thestrangeloop.com/preschedule.html">
   pre-conference workshops</A>
were today, and I wish I could have been here in time for the
Future of Programming workshop.  Alas, I have a day job and had
to teach class before hitting the road.  My students knew I was
eager to get away and bid me a quick goodbye as soon as we wrapped
up our discussion of table-driven parsing.  (They may also have
been eager to finish up the scanners for their compiler project...)

As always, the conference line-up consists of strong speakers and
intriguing talks throughout.  Tomorrow, I'm looking forward to
talks by
<A HREF="http://www.thestrangeloop.com/2015/propositions-as-types.html">
   Philip Wadler</A>
and
<A HREF="http://www.thestrangeloop.com/2015/ideology.html">
   Gary Bernhardt</A>.
Wadler is Wadler, and if anyone can shed new light in 2015 on the
'types versus unit tests' conflagration and make it fun, it's
probably Bernhardt.

On Saturday, my attention is honed in on David Nolen's and Michael
Bernstein's
<A HREF="http://www.thestrangeloop.com/2015/a-history-of-programming-languages-for-2-voices.html">
   A History of Programming Languages for 2 Voices</A>.
I've been big fans of their respective work for years, swooning
on Twitter and reading their blogs and papers, and now I can
see them in person.  I doubt I'll be able to get close, though;
they'll probably be swamped by groupies.  Immediately after that
talk, Matthias Felleisen is giving
<A HREF="http://www.thestrangeloop.com/2015/big-bang-the-world-the-universe-and-the-network-in-the-programming-language.html">
   a talk on Racket's big-bang</A>,
showing how we can use pure functional programming to teach
algebra to middle school students and fold the network into the
programming language.

Saturday was to begin with a keynote by Kathy Sierra, whom I last
saw many years ago at OOPSLA.  I'm sad that she won't be able to
attend after all, but I know that Camille Fournier's talk about
<A HREF="http://www.thestrangeloop.com/2015/hopelessness-and-confidence-in-distributed-systems-design.html">
   hopelessness and confidence in distributed systems design</A>
will be an excellent lead-off talk for the day.

I do plan one change for this StrangeLoop: my laptop will stay in
its shoulder bag during all of the talks.  I'm going old school,
with pen and a notebook in hand.  My mind listens differently
when I write notes by hand, and I have to be more frugal in the
notes I take.  I'm also hoping to feel a little less stress.  No
need to blog in real time.  No need to google every paper the
speakers mention.  No temptation to check email and do a little
work.  StrangeLoop will have my full attention.

The last time I came to StrangeLoop, I read Raymond Queneau's
charming and occasionally disorienting "Exercises in Style",
in preparation for
<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2013-10.html#e2013-10-07T12_07_34.htm">
   Crista Lopes's talk</A>
about her exercises in <EM>programming</EM> style.  Neither the
book nor talk disappointed.  This year, I am reading <EM>The
Little Prince</EM> -- for the first time, if you can believe it.
I wonder if any of this year's talks draw their inspiration from
Saint-Exup&eacute;ry?  At StrangeLoop, you can never rule that
kind of connection out.
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