TITLE: Strange Loop 1: Day One
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: October 01, 2021  5:46 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:

 On this first day of my first virtual conference, I saw a number
 of Strange Loop-y talks: several on programming languages and
 compilers, a couple by dancers, and a meta-talk speculating on the
 future of conferences.

 • I'm not a security guy or a cloud guy, so the opening keynote
 "Why Security is the Biggest Benefit of Using the Cloud" by AJ Yawn
 gave me a chance to hear what people in this space think and talk
 about.  Cool trivia: Yawn played a dozen college basketball games
 for Leonard Hamilton at Florida State.  Ankle injuries derailed his
 college hoops experience, and now he's a computer security professional.

 • Richard Marmorstein's talk, "Artisanal, Machine-Generated API
 Libraries" was right on topic with my compiler course this semester.
 My students would benefit from seeing how software can manipulate AST
 nodes when generating target code.

 Marmorstein uttered two of the best lines of the day:
<ul>
<li> "I could tell you a lot about Stripe, but all you need to know
     is Stripe has an API."  </li>
<li> "Are your data structures working for you?"  </li>
</ul>

 I've been working with students all week trying to help them see
 how an object in their compiler such as a token can help the compiler
 do its job -- and make the code simpler to boot.  Learning software
 design is hard.

 &bull; I learned a bit about
<a href="https://nim-lang.org/">
 the Nim programming language</a>
 from Aditya Siram.  As you might imagine, a language designed at
 the nexus Modula/Oberon, Python, and Lisp appeals to me!

 &bull; A second compiler-oriented talk, by Richard Feldman,
 demonstrated how <em>opportunistic in-place mutation</em>, a static
 optimization, can help a pure functional program outperform
 imperative code.

 &bull; After the talk "Dancing With Myself", an audience member
 complimented Mariel Pettee on "nailing the Strange Loop talk".  The
 congratulations were spot-on.  She hit the technical mark by
 describing the use of two machine learning techniques, variational
 auto encoding and graph neural networks.  She hit the aesthetic mark
 by showing how computer models can learn and generate choreography.
 When the video for this talk goes live, you should watch.

 Pettee closed with the expansive sort of idea that makes Strange
 Loop a must-attend conference.  Dance has no universal language for
 "writing" choreography, and video captures only a single instance
 or implementation of a dance, not necessarily the full intent of
 the choreographer.  Pettite had expected her projects to show how
 machine learning can support <em>invention</em> and <em>co-creation</em>,
 but now she sees how work like this might provide a means of
 <b>documentation</b>.  Very cool.  Perhaps CS can help to create a
 new kind of language for describing dance and movement.

 &bull; I attended Laurel Lawson's "Equitable Experiential Access:
 Audio Description" to learn more about ways in which videos and
 other media can provide a fuller, more equitable experience to
 everyone.  Equity and inclusion have become focal points for so
 much of what we do at my university, and they apply directly to my
 work creating web-based materials for students.  I have a lot to
 learn.  I think one of my next steps will be to experience some of
 web pages (session notes, assignments, resource pages) solely
 through a screen reader.

 &bull; Like all human activities, traditional in-person conferences
 offer value and extract costs.  Crista Lopes used her keynote closing
 Day 1 to take a sober look at the changes in their value and their
 costs in the face of technological advances over the last thirty years.

 If we are honest with ourselves, virtual conferences are already able
 to deliver most of the value of in-person conferences (and, in some
 ways, provide <em>more</em> value), at much lower cost.  The technology
 of going virtual is the easy part.  The biggest challenges are social.

 ~~~~~

 A few closing thoughts as Day 1 closes.

 As Crista said, "Taking paid breaks in nice places never gets old."
 My many trips to OOPSLA and PLoP provided me with many wonderful
 physical experiences.  Being in the same place with my colleagues
 and friends was always a wonderful social experience.  I like
 driving to St. Louis and going to Strange Loop in person; sitting
 in my basement doesn't feel the same.

 With time, perhaps my expectations will change.

 It turns out, though, that "virtual Strange Loop" is a lot like
 "in-person Strange Loop" in one essential way: several cool new
 ideas arrive every hour.  I'll be back for Day Two.
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