First session today was called “Is FP for me” and covered the areas in which functional programming might be useful. The session was given by Hubert Matthews and gave an excellent overview of when and where to use a functional programming language. He started by discussing the different types of language, using as examples Fortran (for mathematical calculation), COBOL (for business applications) and Lisp (for more algorithmic and abstract programming). Although all three languages were created in the 1950s, they are still with us today, COBOL having inspired the creation of imperative languages such as C/C++ and Smalltalk, Lisp providing ideas which have developed into Haskell, OCaml and similar. When asked which language would give a neophyte a good introduction into the techniques, Hubert suggested Haskell.

Read the rest of this entry »

Interesting session this morning, from Schalke Cronje, on RPM package management. One of those sessions that cover a subject I know something about but have never had time to look at in depth. Schalke covered the basic command line usage of RPM and then showed us how to create spec files and build packages that could be distributed over multiple platforms. Nothing stunningly new, but all explained clearly and it will certainly give me the confidence to try packaging up some of my stuff with a few more deployment features.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the tracks at this conference has been on functional programming and today’s sessions covered FP in general and more specifically, Erlang and Haskell. Every conference has a special track, in the past there has been template programming in C++, C# and .Net programming, or open source software. The special tracks often are on subjects which are not mainstream at present. But if they are well attended, it’s usually an indication that they may be in the next couple of years. And the FP sessions were very well attended (I spent a couple sitting on the floor) so expect to see more of these languages in the future.

Read the rest of this entry »

So it’s April, I’m in Oxford… it must be the ACCU conference again. This is a leading conference for programmers in the UK and Europe and brings some of the brightest and best in one place for four days of talks, meetings and after-hours wining and dining. Read the rest of this entry »