Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:11 — 21.8MB) | Embed
On today’s TechCast, Sujan and Ken talk to Heather Miller. Previously a student under Martin Odersky, she is currently Executive Director of the Scala Center, as well as a research scientist at EPFL. Her talk, Academese to English: A Practical Tour of Scala’s Type System, was extremely well-received at Philly ETE. In it, Heather tried to simplify the conversation around Scala – demystifying the ‘hard parts’ of Scala, and reassuring her audience that there’s no need to do fancy type acrobatics to be a good Scala developer.
You can learn more about Philly ETE, the developer-friendly, Chariot-sponsored conference here.
We Talk to Heather About:
- Her new role as Executive Director of the Scala Center, and her efforts to form where the small, strictly not-for-profit team is headed with the language, and how they plan to grow the ecosystem and community.
- The Scala team’s 2-year plan: responding to the pain points of their donors, and contributors, and directing efforts based on their feedback. Other goals include creating package indices, and delineating the standard library into a core and a platform.
- The areas of Scala that Heather would most like to see demystified – like the type system – and how she wishes there were more mid-level resources surrounding it. Heather also discusses ScalaFiddle (JSFiddle for Scala), and how she’s hoping it’ll bridge knowledge gaps in the Scala community.
- Heather’s accidental foray into Scala.
- And on the diversity front, her biggest takeaway from being a woman in tech: persistence.
Links Mentioned:
- Heather’s ETE talk on SpeakerDeck.
- Share Scala code in real-time on ScalaFiddle.
Upcoming Events
Chariot Technology Architect Sujan Kapadia (@sujankapadia) will be speaking at the following events:
- Reactive NYC Meetup in New York City. His talk is titled “Don’t block on it! Migrate your codebase before its too late!” Check it out and register on Meetup.com.
- At Philly Tech Week he’ll be conducting a 3 hour intro to Scala workshop titled “Intro to Scala: Fear no more!” Check it out and register here.