Functional Geekery Episode 47 - John A. De Goes

In this episode I talk with John De Goes. We cover his introduction to functional programming, reasons for starting a functional programming conference, evolution of LambdaConf, what to look forward to at LambdaConf 2016, the choice to pick PureScript at SlamData, and more.

Our Guest, John De Goes

@jdegoes on Twitter
http://degoes.net/
John on LinkedIn
LambdaConf

Announcements

On May 2nd and 3rd flatMap(Oslo) is taking place in Oslo, Norway. flatMap(Oslo) is a conference about functional programming, mainly on the JVM. The call for speakers is now open. To find out more visit http://2016.flatmap.no for more information, and make sure to use code GEEKERY when registering to find out more.

LambdaConf will be taking place May 26th – 29th in Boulder, Colorado. Keep an eye on lambdaconf.us to find out more and to register, and make sure to use code 10Geekery for 10% off the Standard Self-pay registration..

PolyConf 2016 will be taking place on June 30th – July 2nd. The Call For Proposals is now open, and will be taking submissions through the 13th of March. Visit http://polyconf.com/ to keep updated with news as more details become available, and http://eventil.com/events/polyconf-16 to submit your talk proposal.

If you have a conference related to functional programming, contact me, and I will be happy to announce it.

Topics

About John
SlamData
LambdaConf 2015 episodes, Part 1 and Part 2
How John got into Functional Programming
Mathematica
Haskell
Immutable data structures and recursion instead of loops
Scala
PureScript
“Breaking things down into smaller things we can think about”
Organizing LambdaConf 2014
“A desire to promote functional programming”
Growth of LambdaConf from 2014 to 2015
Being forced to answer “When are we going to be able to register for LambdaConf 2015?”
“We were able to help a lot of people find jobs from LambdaConf 2015”
Zeeshan Lakhani on Lisp Flavoured Erlang at LambdaConf 2015
Emily presentation at LambdaConf 2015
Benefit of cross pollination of ideas across functional programming languages
Feel of Lambda 2016
Beginning Haskell and Intermediate Haskell workshop from Chris Allen and Julie Moronuki
http://haskellbook.com/
Mini Conferences the day before
Workshops
Breaking the tracks into beginner, intermediate, and advanced
Unconference the day after
Why PureScript at SlamData
Haxe
PureScript IRC room
Difference of the semantics between Haskell on GHC and Haskell on JavaScript
Elm
The ability to hire people writing PureScript
“If you pick PureScript, you will have more people apply than you could hire”
“Trying to forever change the way people write frontend software”
“If a big company says ‘Hey, we going to do PureScript’, there’s now risk there”
Discount code for LambdaConf is `10Geekery`
“You really can make a difference”
Importance of sharing knowledge at every level of skill
“I will connect with any software developer on LinkedIn”

As always, a giant Thank You goes to David Belcher for the logo design.