Scala World 2017
So this year I managed to go to Scala World again and, like last year, it was awesome. Also like last year the event featured some extra activities, outdoors. And unlike last year, this time I participated in one of them: the Sunday Hike. It was a great opportunity to exercise a bit, walking over a mountain – and to do some networking. In the end I was really tired, my knees were hurting, but I also met nice people and had great conversations. Plus the views were just awesome.
The conference itself started on Monday, with a short introduction from Jon Pretty, followed by a keynote from Edward Kmett with nice content, delivered with Haskell examples. I must admit I got lost in the middle of the talk, so it is good to know that the recording should be available at some point 🙂
During the first day of the conference we had talks about Lambdas, Matryoshka, functional composition and functional APIs, and also some more practical topics like the changes that are coming to the Scala Collections in Scala version 2.13 and the Dotty development and where it is right now. This day also presented an opportunity for me to get in contact with some terms that I was not fully aware of, like `anamorphism`, `catamorphism`, `Fix` and `hylomorphysm`. Not that I fully understand all of that, but now at least I know that they are out there and where to look when I face them again in the future.
To close off the first day, we had a very nice diner, with beer and an interesting “random talk” by Viktor Klang, with fun anecdotes from his 10 years of involvement in the Scala ecosystem. Or something like that 😉
Day 2 was a good continuation for the first day, with lots of good talks. Daniela Sfregola’s Category Theory introduction was specially interesting to me: it is nice to see introductory talks and workshops covering more advanced topics, and to see lots of people interested in it. Lots of people attended those talks. It is also nice to see that some of those topics are not really that complex, they just have scary names.
One extra highlight for me was the fact that the conference this year featured quite a few female speakers. It is really nice to see diversity increasing, especially in advanced conferences like this one. Kudos to the organization, and to all the women that were there talking!
In summary, the event was a bit small, but awesome. It is just a pity that it will not happen again next year. Perhaps in 2019, but that remains to be seen. Fingers crossed!
You can see my pictures from the Sunday Hike and the event itself on my flickr album.
JCranky 