Scala Talks: Precision error handling & Lessons learned writing Elm

🎉Come along to the London Scala Talks! 🎉
Hear from Uma Zalakain on precision error handling in Functional Scala and from Sophie Collard on lessons learnt from writing 10k LOC in Elm.

📢 Sign up on EventBrite before 20th May to access the building: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/scala-talks-error-handling-with-errata-lessons-learned-writing-elm-tickets-885531958927
🌐 This event will have a livestream. Watch this space for the link!
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*Agenda*
6:15pm - 🍻 Doors open. Come along and grab a drink!
6:45pm - 🗣️ Uma Zalakain: Precision Error Handling in Functional Scala
7:25pm - 🍕 Intermission: Join us for some free food and drinks! Vegan, vegetarian and gluten free options are provided. Let us know if you'd like something special - we'd be happy to accommodate.
8:00pm - 🗣️ Sophie Collard: Lessons learnt from writing 10k LOC in Elm
8:45pm - 🍻 Join us in a pub to discuss the talks!
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🗣️ Uma Zalakain: Precision Error Handling in Functional Scala
Error handling is a core component of software engineering and system design. In functional Scala, we want our types to be expressive and precise, enabling us to reason about the behaviour and composition of our programs. Cats is a widely used library that provides useful abstractions for functional programming in Scala. Its current error handling mechanisms are however weak and open to runtime errors. There is no inherent reason for this to be the case.
I will introduce a small library for more precise error handling, and highlight how it guarantees that errors are caught at compile time. The library is fully compatible with cats, but its ultimate goal is to disappear and be merged into cats. Before reaching that stage, I want to gather people’s opinions and further polish our approach.
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⭐ Uma Zalakain ⭐
Uma is a software engineer, and currently writes functional Scala for ITV. Her past experience with Scala was on RISE, a research compiler specialising in applying user-defined optimisations to a functional user-level language embedded in Scala, where programs are compiled down to a range of shader languages.
Her previous experience is in academia, where she worked defining languages for concurrency and using proof assistants like Agda and Coq to mechanically prove type safety properties. This provided her with years of experience using languages with dependent types, and in defining languages with advanced type systems like session types and linear types.
In general, she is a big proponent of static, compile-time guarantees and expressive type systems.
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🗣️ Sophie Collard : Lessons learnt from writing 10k LOC in Elm
Elm is a strongly typed, purely functional DSL described by its creator as a "delightful language for reliable web applications".
A couple years back, frustrated with my limited but already painful experiences with React and Vue, I did what any sane developer would. After spending all of 20 minutes playing with in-browser tutorials, I opted to make Elm the main language for my next project.
In this talk, I will reflect on my experience building and growing a 10k LOC Elm codebase. Most importantly, I hope to convince you that Elm is awesome and that frontend development needs not be the lawless, weakly typed wasteland it first appears to be.
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⭐ Sophie Collard ⭐
Sophie is a Software Engineer and ex-Data Scientist with a fondness for strongly typed functional languages. She has worked with Scala for the past 8 years and more recently delved into frontend development with Elm. She was most recently a Lead Software Engineer at JPMorgan, where she worked on the Model Engineering Platform. Her academic background is in Environmental Engineering (BEng) and Renewable Energy (MSc).
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