Speaking at CUSEC

Jan 11, 2009

If you live in the area and you're not going to CUSEC, you're crazy. The speaker lineup is absolutely amazing, including such names as...

  • Richard Stallman (yes, the famous RMS)
  • Dan Ingalls
  • Avi Bryant (if you've never heard Avi speak, you don't know what you're missing)
  • Giles Bowkett

Sounds expensive, right? Wrong.

All three days of the conference cost only $150.

Also, I'll be speaking Friday morning. Here's the abstract...

Storming the Java Bastille: a political introduction to dynamic languages

Working with rigid, static languages is like living in a communist dictatorship. Your freedom is extremely limited, there’s a lot of bureaucracy, and it’s often painful.

Working with dynamic languages, by contrast, is like living under libertarian rule. The government is small and doesn’t like to make decisions on your behalf. They provide you a lot of freedom and leave it up to the community to decide how best to do things. But, with great power comes great responsibility. Dynamic languages are like a chainsaw: powerful, but watch out for your extremities.

In this code-heavy session, we’ll take a look at the pros and cons of both styles, hopefully without losing any limbs.

If last year's CUSEC was any indication, this is going to be a great conference. Hope to see you there!