Strange Loop 2012: Day 2

Day 2 of Strange Loop 2012, in my opinion, was the best day of the conference proper: lots of good choices on each time slot and promising keynotes. Even though I attended great sessions in all time slots but two (due to health reasons), I'm going to highlight only three of those since they had the most impact or resonated with me the most.

To kick things off, the morning keynote "Computing Like The Brain" was a tour de force of state-of-the-art Computational Neuroscience. The speaker, although limited in time, tried his best to give the audience a survey of basic Neuroscience and from these concepts he built models, constructs and abstractions that can be (and have been) implemented with computers. Overall a great presentation with tons of new concepts to mull about.

"How Plato and Aristotle invented modern programming" was a session I attended in the lunch-time slot. This session resonated with me at many levels. For one, the speaker was well-informed and well-versed in the fields of Philosophy and Computer Science. He used that knowledge to beautifully craft his thesis: that the notions of Potentiality and Realization, from abstract thought to palpable implementation are the foundations of a programming language or even the computer itself. He was very attentive to the audience and always made sure we were following his argument and would stop and backtrack as needed. I got the sense the audience was left both marveled and very interested in the subject matter.

To close the day and conference, a keynote by EcmaScript's inventor and designer Brendan Eich. Titled "The State of JavaScript", the presentation started as a Mea Culpa of sorts -- taking blame for some of ES/JS early and current problems. After that, he gave a brief history of the language and all the politics surrounding its development. About half-way through the talk, he delved into the good stuff: what's coming down the pipeline for ES specification version 6 (ES6). If you like or are curious about Python, ES6 will be right up your alley, so to speak, since it's heavily influenced by Python. Introduction of List, Sets, List and Set comprehensions, lambda expressions and a host of other language features that will be warmly welcome by the programmer community at large. The presentation definitely spurred the interest of many in the audience to keep an eye on the implementation of the spec.

Then, to continue with the excitement, after a quick farewell from the organizers, we were told the area was under Tornado Warning and to take cover if things got ugly (at which time someone in the audience cheered). But, of course, the warning was ignored by most of the audience who left the opera hall with copious amounts of rain, wind and lightning overhead. :)