ACM SIGPLAN 2008 Developer Tracks on Functional Programming

With the explosion of interest in real-world use of functional programming, DEFUN is aimed squarely at practitioners: developers and technical managers who are using functional programming, or who are considering doing so. Attendees will learn how to achieve maximum benefit using functional programming from experienced practitioners, both from industry and academia. Talks provide concrete advice on how to tackle specific problems using functional programmings. Tutorials are forums for collaborative learning and hands-on practice of functional programming and function-programming techniques. Whereas the talks are pure presentations (with short Q&As), the tutorials are partly presentations, and partly "bring-your-laptop" sessions, where the tutorial presenter arranges practice problems for the participants to work on, and looks over the participants' shoulders.

Thus, the developer tracks are complementary to ICFP itself (which is for researchers). They are anchored by CUFP, the Haskell Symposium, and the Erlang workshop. Together, these events constitute a conference for developers that will promote participation by the growing community of professional users of functional programming technology.

DEFUN will have several tracks with the following types of presentations:

45-minute "how-to" talks that provide specific information on how to solve specific problems using functional programming. These talks focus on concrete examples, but provide useful information for developers working on different projects or in different contexts.
Half-day general language tutorials for specific functional languages, given by recognized experts for the respective languages.
Half-day tutorials on specific techniques or the use of specific technologies in functional programming.

Program

Note: The sessions of a given morning or afternoon are concurrent. The markers (M1, M2, A1, A2, etc.) mark a particular session, and correspond to the designations on the registration forms. Note that the talks M5 together constitute a session.

Day 1 - 25 September, 2008

Morning Session

M1 (Tutorial): Practical Erlang Programming

Francesco Cesarini

Erlang Training and Consulting

M2 (Tutorial): A Gentle Introduction to Functional Information Visualization

Jefferson Heard

Renaissance Computing Institute, University of North Carolina

M3 (Tutorial): JavaScript: from basics to building custom frameworks

Sameer Sundresh and Erik Hinterbichler

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Pattern Insight, Inc.

Afternoon Session