Scala: More than just a better Java & Unravelling 'bound'

Moving this to the 3rd Tuesday since everyone has taken a while to get back into the swing of things after the break. :)

Scala: More than just a better Java - George Wilson

This talk aims to be a very accessible introduction to one of the most popular modern functional programming languages: Scala. Even those who have never come
into contact with functional programming before should find real benefits within - particularly those who work with Java.
Scala is a popular programming language which attempts to combine features from both object-oriented and functional programming. As Scala compiles to JVM bytecode, it is compatible with existing codebases written in other JVM languages, such as Java.

This talk will demonstrate some beneficial features of Scala, focusing on those which lend themselves to a functional style of program construction. These features include pattern matching, algebraic datatypes, and Scala's focus on
immutable data.

Unravelling 'bound' - David Laing

Haskell makes it easy to write embedded domain specific languages (EDSLs).

Making the lamba calculus - variables, lambda abstraction and function application - part of our EDSLs gives us the ability to abstract and reuse fragments of programs in our EDSL, but can also add significant complexity to the implementation of the EDSL.

The `bound` library greatly simplifies this for us. This means we can add some functionality to our EDSL very cheaply, or possibly that it solves a problem we didn't know we had.

This talk will walk through why having the lambda calculus as part of your EDSL is a good thing, how to make that happen using `bound`, and some of the fun we can once we've done that.