Speakers

Rick Minerich: Functional Ideas for a Cloudy Future (Keynote)

As we continue to hit new walls in computability, we continue to find new and innovative ways to skirt these limitations.  However, solutions most often come in the form of constraints on how we program.  Luckily, many of the constraints in functional programming manifest into properties that align very well with the needs of distributed computing and bring along other benefits as well. As we move to a cloudy world, will functional programming come to dominate? The evidence says yes, but not in the way you might expect.

About Mr. Minerich:

Richard Minerich is a researcher and full time functional programmer at Bayard Rock, a new company dedicated to applying the cutting edge from academia to solve real world problems. Over the past four years he’s been speaking, blogging and writing with the goal of helping programmers of all kinds understand why functional programming is important. Richard is a Microsoft F# MVP and his most recent work is Professional F# 2.0.

Abdul Habra: An Introduction to Functional Programming with JavaScript

Abdul Habra

We will discuss pure functions, closures/lambdas, higher-order functions, combinators like filter, map, reduce, and fold. We will use both native JavaScript features and some libraries as well. Minimum basic knowledge of JavaScript is expected. The session will be slide-light and code-heavy. It will benefit mainly JavaScript programmers who are trying to learn Functional Programming.

About Mr. Habra:

I am an independent contractor (working mostly with Pillar Technology) who has been professionally programming since 1985. I enjoy learning languages, some of them are Ada, APL, C, C++, C#, Clipper, Delphi, Icon, Java, JavaScript, Lisp, Modula-2, Pascal, PL/1, Prolog, Ruby, Scala. I was good at each of them once, but not all now.

Dave Ray

Dave Ray: Practical Abstraction with Clojure

Seesaw is a user interface toolkit built on the venerable Swing library. It’s truly enjoyable to work with and it’s all thanks to Clojure. Clojure gives developers great tools for creating abstractions. This talk is about the practical application of those tools to breathe new life into a moldy, old API like Swing.

About Mr. Ray:

Dave Ray is a software engineer from Ann Arbor, MI. For over 13 years he has worked on a variety of problems including modeling and simulation, cognitive architecture, compilers, image processing, embedded systems, document recognition, and otherwise gluing together random software systems. Dave has programmed in many languages over the years, but Clojure’s his favorite.

Leon Gersing: Welcome to Erlang

Many of us choose languages that are familiar to us and our existing sensibilities. A rubyist may choose to dabble in Python, C# developers may look at F# or Node flavored JavaScript and a Java Developer may choose something targeting the JVM. One of the most insightful languages I’ve had a chance to learn has been Erlang. It’s approach to desgining applications provides an alternative to most modern day langauges that provides lessons that have profoundly informed how I approach crafting solutions in my daily Ruby work. Come learn a little bit about the world of Erlang and what it can offer you as a language and start your journey into a brand new world of funcitonal programming.

In this session, we’ll look at the Erlang programming language, the OTP library that ships with Erlang and finally some real work examples of how I took some of these learnings back to my Ruby work. No knowledge of Ruby or Erlang is required but could prove useful as a point of comparison for the sesson.

About Mr. Gersing:

Leon Gersing (@rubybuddha) Leon has been bringing value to clients large and small for over ten years, and has a passion for technology, art and community. He has experience implementing solutions in C#, JavaScript (both server and client side), Ruby, Python, Objective-C, Ruby and Rails and more.  Leon spends time presenting on a wide variety of development topics at events and user groups in the region. He loves nothing more than to be around other developers, working together to create something unique and fresh; something that has never been done before. He believes there is no challenge that can’t be overcome with passion and creativity. He can be found tending binary zen gardens with fellow artisans at EdgeCase in Columbus and bringing great products to market with his own company, No Spoon Software.

Dianne Marsh: Introducing Functional to the Masses

Have you heard about functional programming but aren’t sure what should be your next step toward adoption? Are you looking for ways to introduce functional programming without scaring your coworkers and your boss? How can you
convince others than the paradigm shift is worthwhile? That it will provide business value while making the programmers and customers happy?

You will come out of this talk with the techniques to bring functional programming to your organization with minimal stress. Whether you use Java, C#, or are gunning for Scala, this talk is for you. We’ll show examples of how to weave in
functional, starting with how to talk about functional and ending with real code examples, showing that functional programming can be … well … functional.

About Ms. Marsh:

Dianne Marsh is the co-founder of SRT Solutions in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her expertise in software programming and technology includes manufacturing, genomics decision support and real-time processing applications. Dianne started
her professional career using C and has enjoyed using many languages, including C++, Java, and C# since then, and is currently having a lot of fun using Scala. Dianne is a member of the Women Presidents Organization (http://
http://www.womenpresidentsorg.com) and a board member of the Ann Arbor Hands on Museum. Dianne is one of the organizers for CodeMash (http://codemash.org), an all-volunteer developer conference focused on bringing together programmers of various programming languages to learn from one another. She is active with the local user groups, including hosting several. She earned her Master of Science degree in computer science from Michigan Technological University.