The call for papers for linux.conf.au 2010 has been open for a few weeks, and closes soon (July 24).
I really want to encourage some talks about functional programming! The conference has a pretty strong developer focus, and most talks are about a practical topic. More importantly, we're looking for talks that inspire people to try new techniques, to approach design and troubleshooting with clarity and vigor (yarr!), to boldly consider that they should perhaps spend some time honing their craft before writing yet another application that inexplicably fails at runtime -- all in a friendly and entirely non-condescending environment of hackers having fun hacking.
Here's some suggestions for the kind of talks that I think could be interesting:
- systems programming in Haskell/OCaml/whatever: how you wrote an interface to some hardware, handled lots of IO, controlled a robot, whatever
- functional programming for kernel development: verification, security etc.
- game programming: higher order design for 3D, AI etc.
- proof vs. testing: (can anyone do a tutorial on proof without greek letters? not that Patryk Zadarnowski's talk about the Curry-Howard Isomorphism a few years ago wasn't *awesome*, but as a result of that people are clamoring (clamoring!) for some advice about how to prove their programs have no bugs).
- some ... other ... practical benefit of functional programming!
The conference is in Wellington in January. January! it'll be windy, and it's in New Zealand!
