VT Functional Programmers - Let's Get Cozy with Relations

You probably first heard the term "relation" when you were 10 years old. Did you embrace it? I wish I had.

I plan to:

• sneak up on the term through iconic hacker culture (of course!)
• look relations straight in the eye
• check out slippery nearby terms like predicate, function,
  procedure, and (maybe not) abstraction (that's another talk!)
• say a tiny bit, but almost nothing about SQL and logic
  programming, and a little bit about other problem solving
  approaches
• show a practical application: graphics
• show a theoretical application: (shudder) semantics

On the practical side, if you are a day-to-day programmer, I think this talk will knock you sideways into a fresh perspective on your work. On the theoretical side, getting cozy with relations has really helped me approach the heavier VTFun talks, and that middle section of the "Papers We Love" that you really just want to skip, and so many things I've supposedly learned, but never really grokked.

About the Presenter:
Anthony Carrico earned a master's degree in electrical and computer engineering, primarily in signal processing and computer architecture. He tried to learn to code at an AI company heated with Lisp and Unix machines. He went on to program Japanese music video games. His wife teaches at St. Mike's, and he currently gets to stay home with the kids. His last presentation for VTFun was confusingly called "Pay Attention to Racket", but "Expressions" would have been a much more accurate title.

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