Lambda Land in Layperson's Language, and an Introduction to Laws

This is a very exciting month for BFPG!

Our very own Katie Miller (blog (http://codemiller.com/), @codemiller (https://twitter.com/codemiller)) and prolific meetup organiser Steve Dalton (@spidie (http://twitter.com/spidie)) are going to share with us the talk they'll be giving at the Linux.conf.au (http://linux.conf.au/) Open Programming Miniconf in late January.

This is a great chance to show support for one of the few Functional Ladies we see in our local community. Katie is well known in the Geek Circles in Brisbane as the gal who consistently shows despite often being the only lady in the crowd. She's an asset to our industry and we're incredibly happy to see her as part of Linux.conf.au.

The talk is titled "Making code more functional: Lambda land in layperson's language". The details are:

Functional programming (FP) has escaped from the ivory tower and is rising in popularity with software developers around the world. This presentation explains some of the reasons for the buzz around FP and attempts to demystify a few of the paradigm's esoteric terms. It will include examples of how FP techniques can be applied in a variety of open source programming languages that are not traditionally considered functional, including Java, Python and Perl. The aim of the presentation is to give every developer a few techniques they can apply, no matter what language they code in.

To follow up, Nick Partridge (@nkpart (http://twitter.com/nkpart)) will give an Introduction to Laws, the unsung heros of programming.

Everyone who's seen a monad tutorial has heard of the Laws, but not much has been said of them on their own. We're going to explore what they are, why they're not only necessary to programming with typeclasses but also the most valuable feature, how to obey the laws and what happens when you break them (using examples of real world law violations).

Nick is a founding member of BFPG, and a contributor to a number of open-source Haskell and Scala libraries.

Come along, show your support, enjoy some awesome talks, and get some hot tips on introducing FP into your programming practice. Bring your friends, bring your partners, mums and grandparents. This is one for everyone!