Published 2017-10-04.
This was my fifth (or maybe sixth?) year attending Strange Loop.
It’s gotten bigger than ever: the conference used two venues at once this year, and a couple talks I went to had people standing all along the walls after the seats were filled.
I found it invigorating as always - here are a few of my highlights:
- Zenna Tavares talked about his work on finding 3D models corresponding to given 2D images by running a rendering function in reverse.
- Jacob Bass gave a tantalizing introduction to ReasonML, a Facebook project that provides an alternate syntax & javascript compiler for OCaml.
Also, “tests tell you what you remembered, types tell you what you forgot” is a pretty catchy line.
- Heather Miller provided a tour of distributed programming languages / libraries from the past 35 years, from Argus to Lasp.
- Tara Vancil demoed her peer-to-peer browser Beaker, built on Dat.
I’d love to see something like this make its way into mainstream browsers.
- Matt Mitchell gave a keynote I regret missing - his slide deck contains a neat collection of funding sources and community resources for doing public interest tech work.
- My awesome coworker Kevin Shekleton gave a very entertaining history of game console security.
Food recommendations: Sugarfire has pretty good barbecue, with excellent mac & cheese; the carnitas breakfast taco at Egg is delicious; the Fountain’s ice cream martinis are wonderful.