There's No Such Thing As Plain Text - with Dylan Beattie

For our November meet-up, we are excited to announce Dylan Beattie will be joining us to deliver his talk on "There's No Such Thing As Plain Text".

Software is complicated. Machine learning, microservice architectures, message queues… every few months there’s another revolutionary idea to consider, another framework to learn. And underneath so many of these amazing ideas and abstractions is text. When you work in software, you spend your life working with text. Some of those text files are source code, some are configuration files, some of them are documentation. Editors, revision control systems, programming languages - everything from C# and HTML to Git and VS Code is based on the idea that we’re working with “plain text” files. But… what if I told you there’s no such thing?

When we say something is a plain text file, we’re relying on a huge number of assumptions - about operating systems, editors, file formats, language, culture, history… and, most of the time, that’s OK. But when it goes wrong, good old plain text can lead to some of the weirdest bugs you’ve ever seen. Why is there Chinese in the SQL event logs? Why has the city of Aarhus disappeared? And why does Magnus Mårtensson always have trouble getting into the USA? Join Dylan Beattie for a fascinating look into the hidden world of text files - from the history of mechanical teletypes, to how emoji skin tones actually work. We’ll look at some memorable bugs, some golden rules for working with plain text, and we’ll find out what the phrase “PIKE MATCHBOX” has to do with driving in the Soviet Union.

Food

We have a selection of food available including Vegan options but if you'd like to know more please drop one of our organisers a message before the event via the group message forum. (https://secure.meetup.com/messages/)

If you would need assistance to leave the building in the event of an evacuation then please let us know via the group message forum. (https://secure.meetup.com/messages/)

Schedule

Doors open from 18:00

Pizza at 18:30
Intro and welcome 18:40
Speaker Starts 19:00
Close ~21:00 (Don't feel bad if you have to leave early for a train/bus/lift home - no one will be offended)

Live Steam Link
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https://youtube.com/live/u5c0Gzg7T90

Travel

Train - James Street station is a 2-minute walk from the Lab. Liverpool Lime Street is approx 15-20 minutes walking distance.

Driving - Underground parking available.

Bicycle - Cycle rack available.