Metaprogramming in R

R is an open source statistical programming language, which has been developed for nearly 30 years. The R ecosystem includes sophisticated graphing libraries used in academia and commercial science to create “publication-ready” visualizations for scientific papers, as well as trusted implementations of significant mathematical algorithms.

Of interest to Philly Lambda, R is a functional programming language, designed to be a Lisp-style language with a pragmatic syntax that resembles how mathematics is taught in school. This talk will give a brief introduction to R syntax, then focus primarily on metaprogramming, an exciting capability that allows developers to modify the behaviour of the language in powerful ways at runtime.

Speaker: Gary Sieling
Gary is a Principal Software Engineer at Pinnacle 21, where he works on shaping and building new products.

Previously, he worked for Element 84, an AWS consulting company, where he did AWS/ DevOps work for a private satellite operator and a regulatory agency. He worked for 10 years for Wingspan (acquired by IQVIA). At Wingspan he worked on many software engineering roles and projects, primarily document management systems for life sciences. He also worked for about five years at Thomson Reuters, working on data warehousing for law firms.

He has been a co-organizer for Philly ETE, Northeast Scala, and Philly Area Scala Enthusiasts. He has also presented at conferences, such as Richmond, VA JS, Lucene Revolution, and PGConf NYC, as well as at various meetups, including PHASE, DataPhilly, PhillyJUG, and JAMStack Philly.

Venue: Snapyr
Snapyr is a marketing automation startup based in Philly. The platform is a no-code, block-oriented development environment for marketing campaigns (i.e. Scratch for marketing!). Snapyr is focused on retention marketing for the gaming industry. To know more, reach out to brian@snapyr.com.

Food: Pinnacle 21
At Pinnacle 21, employees know they are building something meaningful. The company’s industry-leading clinical data standardization platform streamlines the drug approval process, ultimately getting medications in the hands of patients faster. With its products already in use by the FDA, and industry-wide by biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies, Pinnacle 21 is continuing its work to shrink the clinical trial process, as well as looking to build new products outside of its niche in standardization.

The meetup will be in room 8Y on the 8th floor. All guests need to check in at the front desk and be registered by the day before so we'll be cutting off RSVPs by then.