SFJS #23: Functional Programming and Meteor.js

Related meetups:

After the event, stop by and hack at the SFJS #23 after-party hack night (https://www.meetup.com/jsmeetup/events/61969992/). If you can't get into this one, try SFJS #23.1: More Meteor.js Than You Require (https://www.meetup.com/jsmeetup/events/62829202/) This meetup is sponsored by HTML5DevConf (http://html5devconf.com/), happening this May 21 at the Westin San Francisco. Early bird tickets are now on sale for $65 (http://html5devconfmay2012.eventbrite.com/).

Prizes:

10gen is giving away a ticket to MongoSF (http://www.10gen.com/events/mongo-sf), the MongoDB conference with over 40 developer sessions. View the agenda [pdf] (http://www.10gen.com/static/MongoSF-2012-Agenda.pdf)
HTML5DevConf is giving away a ticket. View the speakers (http://www.html5devconf.com/) or register here (http://html5devconfmay2012.eventbrite.com/). Agenda and slides (http://www.davetech.com/slides/sfjs23.html) will be posted as soon as they are available.

Matt DeBergalis will discuss Meteor:

Meteor is a set of new technologies for building top-quality web apps in a fraction of the time, whether you're an expert developer or just getting started. Modern web applications are smart clients: JavaScript applications that run in our web browsers, and native applications that run on our phones or tablets. They talk to an ever-growing array of scalable, distributed cloud services, such as Facebook Connect (authentication), Google Maps (location awareness), Amazon S3 (storage), and whatever custom services a particular app may need to run in the cloud due to security or persistence
considerations.

Meteor is a new application platform for this new era. It is a set of Smart Packages that address each of the main challenges that developers face in this new world, such as updating a web page automatically when data changes, or performing a "hot code push" to update a running application without users noticing the change. Developers can freely pick and choose the Smart Packages they would like to use in their app. Meteor then processes the Smart Packages together with their application into a self-contained bundle that is ready to deploy into the cloud.

Brian Lonsdorf will discuss Functional Programming:

Functional programming is the misunderstood genius of paradigms. Functional languages like haskell, erlang, clojure, scala, and F# are on the rise though and with good reason. Processor speeds and multi cores and shared memory may be cramping our style (I'll explain later,) but what is relevant right now is writing beautiful code. Code you may have only dreamed about. Code that burns bright in the night sky of the twilight theme of textmate. This is about JavaScript and how it just may be the perfect functional language. Actually it is though. You'll see. You'll all see. This talk will cover:

• What is Functional Programming?
• Why is it sooooo much better than everything else?
• How to write Point-free functional code /slash/ WTF is Point-free functional code?
• Why javascript is a king among functional languages

About the presenter: Brian runs a mobile dev shop called loop/recur (http://looprecur.com/). He has been known to give fanatical talks around the ruby community. What he lacks in smarts he makes up for in passion and good looks. He is not writing my bio himself.