Zach's Journal

I had a great time at the DLS, MSLUG, and a tiny part of OOPSLA. I haven't had time to write up the experience, but I'm off the hook now that I found Dan Weinreb's blog and his lengthy and thorough review of OOPSLA. He covers everything I saw and then some.

The only thing I'd add to his account: if you're visiting Montréal, Yannick is a superb guide.

I'm too tired to recap much, but here's a an inexact paraphrase of an amusing interchange.

David Ungar asked the panel, "Languages can encourage the programmer to think about programming in new ways. I try to encourage creativity by reducing the cognitive load of irrelevant details. What do you try to encourage in programmers through language design?" After a bit of discussion:

Steele: "David spoke of encouraging creativity as a primary goal of language design. Other designs might try to encourage productivity, or something similar. But what form might a language take if its primary goal was to encourage programmer self-esteem?"

Gosling: "Isn't that what Perl is for?"

(Gosling ruined it a bit by adding more explanation after the punchline. Ah, comedy, it ain't easy.)

I'm headed to OOPSLA on Sunday and headed back Tuesday. I'm also going to the MSLUG meeting on Monday.

Yannick Gingras has helpfully created some new wiki pages to help hackers visiting Montréal find interesting things to do, see, or eat.