#CUSEC09: Day 1 report

I’m reclining in bed with a beer and I have to be up in seven hours. Today was a long but good day. I enjoyed the talks and my wander through the city. I sat through three keynotes, ate poutine with smoked meat on it, visited SAQ, checked out the Eaton Centre and had a great deal of trouble speaking French when trying to buy a hat. Here’s how the start of my day went.

The first presentation was a pep talk given by Leah Culver. She explained how software engineers can thrive under pressure with perseverance and creativity. She extolled the benefits of open source, explaining how useful it can be towards getting a job. She snuck in a jab at RoR at the last minute that got the audience grinning. Her answers in the questions period were at least as well received. Her formula for success is already publicly available and open sourced on github. She inspired a drinking game and we might have already seen its first playthrough. Towards the end of the question period, when asked how she handles all the attention she gets, she unwisely admitted in a room full of software engineers that she loves boys. Thank you Leah Culver, now we know how to be awesome! I hope that you manage to find some peace and can enjoy the rest of the conference!

I already posted my notes for the Radialpoint talk. The most important thing that I took away is that every software engineer ought to have a 1.0. That is, work on something new and unproven, and it’s best to do it early on when you can absorb risk much more easily. You won’t have a family to starve by working at a startup when you’re a fresh grad. I was surprised when I found out that Radialpoint used to be known as Zero Knowledge Systems after the cryptographic proof. I recalled Austin Hill’s blog and sure enough the two are related. Marty of Radialpoint was the first employee of the company that Austin Hill co-founded. Austin shared his endorsement.

The last talk that I attended was about the Lively kernel presented by Dan Ingalls. The website does a much better job of explaining what it is than I could this long after the presentation. After the talk I asked him my two questions. It turns out that there has been work towards a translation layer between Qt and the Lively kernel! Later on I’ll post pictures and dig through the mailing list for more details. Right now I’m too tired.

In addition to reading up on the Lively kernel, posting pictures and doing CSC 324 homework, tomorrow I intend to check out some of the recommended local cuisine. Good night.