On the Shoulders of Giants: 400 Years of Raku

Overview

Raku is a new and astonishingly powerful dynamic multiparadigm programming language. Though it was only officially released in 2015, it has actually been in development for well over four centuries.

In this presentation, Dr Damian Conway (one of the core designers of Raku) will demonstrate some of the language’s most useful, convenient, efficient, and just-plain-scary new features, by tracing the entire history of modern computing: from the heroine of Regency Era number theory, to the boffin whose crazy theory won the war, to the champions of free-love non-determinism in the psychedelic ’60s, to the sub rosa inventor of modern encryption, to the enigmatic rōshis of declarative quantum computation.

Along the way, we’ll explore the world’s least-obvious sequence; the world’s first sorting algorithm; the world’s worst sorting algorithm; the art and science of just guessing; how to write Lisp in any language; the joy of subscripts; feline drug abuse; the world’s worst sorting algorithm...optimized; the perils of high precision; the advantages of anonymity; Leonardo’s reward; Monte Carlo, Monty Hall, and Monty Python; and how to pack your bags more efficiently by destroying the entire universe (and possibly several others we passed along the way).

Damian Conway is a well-known speaker and lecturer (see his official biography or his Wikipedia page). Damian already lectured at SIB several times, and consistently received amazing feedback about his courses.

Audience

This talk is designed as an introduction to the Raku language for programmers who are familiar with any other modern programming language(s). No prior knowledge of Raku is necessary.

Prerequisites

Knowledge / competencies

There is no pre-requisite for this course.

Technical

You do not need to bring anything for this course.

Application

Participation to this seminar is free of charge; for organizational purposes, we still ask you to register.

Venue and Time

University of Lausanne, main auditorium of the Biophore building.

The presentation will start at 9:30 and end around 11:30.

Additional information

This seminar is co-organized by the SIB and the EPFL.

Coordination: Frédéric Schütz, SIB training group

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For more information, please contact training@sib.swiss.