TechCast #97 – Heather Miller on Scala

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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.

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Chariot Technology Architect Sujan Kapadia (@sujankapadia) will be speaking at the following events: