A few highlights from Polyglot Conf 2015

JavaScript State of the Union

I didn’t actually plan to record this session, but whipped out the iPhone 6 and figured I’d give it a go. I ended up just recording the entire session. This is basically a level set and review of where and what’s up with the voluminous amount of JavaScript Frameworks, but everybody delves into a number of other things too. The sound is a little rough, but crank it up and you’ll be able to hear everybody speaking just fine.

https://vimeo.com/128691785

Type Providers – Type Systems – Haskell and Conversations

I had more than one conversation, and listened in on more than a few. There was a LOT of hard core knowledge getting discussed and ideas for the future of languages. Everything from F# Type Providers (read more) to Haskell’s Type Safety and the lack there of. Also a few tidbits about building type providers. There was also some pretty big conversations around monolithic and micro-services.

https://twitter.com/senorprogrammer/status/606142130222825472

Check out Martin Fowler’s write up on Monolith First.

I also got to chat with Elana Popovici about her workshop on Science Driven Decision Making, which delved into decision making around statistical analysis and related topics. The other workshop that I wish I’d been able to attend, but at least got to catch up with @BrianDorsey and @tavisrudd for a short time and discussed their Docker & Kubernetes workshop.

To be prepared for next years conference, follow the @PolyglotConf twitter account and be sure to get your tickets early, it tends to sell out.

Vancouver Itself

Polyglot Conference is held yearly in beautiful Vancouver BC. I don’t say Vancouver BC is beautiful just because I’m writing filler junk, this is, without question one of the most beautiful cities on earth along with being one of the most organized and well designed cities on Earth. It is, simply, impressive on a number of fronts. So if you know anything about cities, this is definitely one to visit and admire.

Even if beautiful cities aren’t your thing, Vancouver has an ever increasing array of great breweries, places to explore (in the city and outside), and a host of other places to check out that just add to the atmosphere of the conference itself.

Other benefits of being in Vancouver early for Polyglot conf.

OpenStack Conference

This year, the OpenStack 2015 had a stop in Vancouver, and this year that was great for me too. Even though I didn’t actually go attend the conference I got to meet a number of people in town for that conference since I came into town a few days early for Polyglot Conference.

Now, the OpenStack space is all fine and dandy, but it’s also a political field of landmines. So I’m always glad to just reap the benefits and not go wandering around in that space. I’m perfectly happy sitting above the OpenStack layer and working on applications and systems level operations that are a bit higher in the stack. So, thanks to all those that fight their way through all of that for us DevOps Coders that tend to stay higher in the stack. Kudos to all of you fighting that battle to make OpenStack awesome!

For some background on the war stories, check out

Rabbit MQ

Speaking of happenstance and such I got to meet @michaelklishin thanks to @lenadroid. Thanks for that introduction!

So where are the cool kids eating that are at the #OpenStackSummit today?

— Adron (@Adron) May 21, 2015

Michael and I dove into topics ranging from Cloud Foundry to Rabbit MQ, both things you may know of as Pivotal efforts these days. It just so happened I’ve got a little Cloud Foundry history and am working on using or implementing both on a current contract job I’m doing.

It was good conversation and if you’re into similar things definitely give Michael a follow on twitter and github. He’s also pretty involved in a bunch of OSS work (including of course Rabbit MQ and related) so dive in and introduce yourself.

Summary: I’m already aiming to be there, looking forward to more solid discussion and prospectively putting together a workshop myself and prospectively getting a little hacking festival going on pre- or post- conference.

…but you just need a ticket? Well here’s the deal. I’ve got a ticket, it fell from the tree of random tickets and I shall make it free to one who might want to go. Here’s the smallest catch that I have…

I want to have some extra demo code to show during my presentation on Visual Studio & .NET on OS–X, Linux, and Windows, and I’d love to talk somebody’s demo code up during my presentation. So throw together some demo code in C# or F# that shows something cool, mathematically crazy, or something else that’s interesting to you. This is up to you, so get some code committed to github and ping me with the repo. I’ll hook you up with a ticket to the Progressive .NET Conference in London the 1st, 2nd AND 3rd of July. The way to submit the code is super easy, this really shouldn’t take more than about 20-30 minutes for a ticket that is worth £395, which is over $600 bucks in US dollars – just sayin’, weak US dollar to the British pound and all!

Here’s the rules:

1. You must submit the code to me before June 26th so I can get it thoroughly tested, because YES I will demo with it and give you a shout out.
2. It must be in a simple C# or F# project that is either a console app or just a library that has tests for it that shows or describes what it is doing. (If you do this, I might even throw in another $100 bucks just because you wrote tests!)
3. Put the code in a git repo, and push it up to github. I’ll check it out and declare a winner on the 27th of June.
4. Ping me on twitter @Adron.

See you at Prog Net Conf 2015!

That prompt… let’s get F# so that we can compile and run a file in about a zillionth of a second from the repl.

First I setup a bash script that would be used to compile and then run the file. I created the file and simply named it “fs”. Inside the file I wrote the following script.

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
echo "Compiling F#" + $1
fsharpc "$1.fs"
mono "$1.exe"
echo "Running Executable" + $1
[/sourcecode]

I put that in my scripts folder that I have added to my path in my ~/.bash_profile (or bashrc depending on what you’re rolling with).

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
export PATH="$PATH:~/Codez/scripts"
[/sourcecode]

So now I have the ability to type in the following command and filename and the compile and the executable will be run. It makes for much easier repl usage.

[sourcecode language=”bash”]
fs theFileNameGoesHere
[/sourcecode]

Got any tips or tricks to running F# somewhere besides Windows? Let me know and I’ll be sure to give you a shout out on Twitter and whenever I’m giving a presentation on hacking F# without Windows.