recent meetings
03/03/10: "Boost Your Hibernate and Application Performance" by Greg Luck
01/26/10: "Scaling the Cloud" by Kirk Spadt
12/02/09: "Character Sets, Encodings, Java and Other Headaches" by Brian Clapper
11/04/09: "Protecting Java Code" by Mike Dulaney
10/14/09: "Are You Covered" by Keith Gregory
"Clojure and the Robot Apocalypse" by Scott Fraser
This meeting was sponsored by Portico Systems"
ABSTRACT:
Scott has always known about the coming Robot Apocalypse. But only recently was he convinced, by a Functional Programming evangelist, that the deconstruction of the Imperative and Object Oriented programming paradigms that had dominated Scott’s career for over 22 years might be imminent. Always paranoid about staying relevant, sure that the JVM was here to stay, and with many years of highly multithreaded high performance Java applications behind him, he sought a functional language that would work for him… and was led to Clojure.
Clojure is an exciting lisp dialect with baked in concurrency support. It’s creator, Rich Hickey, was inspired by Haskell and ML, and hopes the language will play as “a dynamic language like Python, Ruby and Groovy”, that is “as accessible as those languages”, but also “as performant as Java and as useful in any context as you would Java”. It sounded perfect. But could it subdue the robots?
Join Scott to learn about Clojure, and what it’s creator calls it’s “Four Legs”:
- functional programming
- lisp
- being hosted on the JVM
- direct support for concurrency
And finally, see Real World Examples™ of using Clojure to control robots, for purposes of self defense, amusement of conference attendees, and otherwise.
SPEAKER BIO
Scott Fraser – co-founder, CTO of Portico Systems
Scott has worked professionally in the information technology sector for more than twenty one years. One of the three original founders of Portico Systems, he continues to have hands-on involvement with the company’s Java-based platform. Previously he worked as an independent consultant specializing in UNIX/Windows C/C++ programming, and networking.
Scott started working with Java in 1996, and looks forward to 10 more years with the language that single-handedly saved him from memory leaks, Win16/32 API’s, and General Protection Faults.
He has a BS in Environmental Biology from Eastern University in St. David’s PA, and is an avid birder.
SCOTT’S PRESENTATION CAN BE FOUND HERE
