Polymoments volume no. 3
So another year is gone and I am back with another installment of my summary for the very best (in my eyes anyway) conference in Europe.
Yes, it is again about Polyconf, but this year in the City of Love Paris! If the previous years it was a blast, this year it was a hyper blast, so let’s don’t wait anymore, and go for the meat. This year our squad (me and Michal Valášek), were flying from two former capitals of the Habsburg Empire Prague, and Vienna on Thursday. We’ve met in the hotel just across the channel from La Geode. After a big hug and cold shower, we moved to the first party of the conference. We were late and the crowd was just moving away from the place. So we talked a little about last year, bought some beers in the shop and drank them on the beach.

At the morning we headed straight to the Eiffel Tower, mostly to make ourselves a selfie under this technical marvel.

After small lunch, we headed to the venue, and in the noon sun, it was even more beautiful than in the evening. The shiny accomplishment of human development.
After registration, which went smoothly, there was the presentation of Platform.sh stuff, and frankly, I liked what they showed quite a bit. It also started the flying competition, which ran through the whole conference and was a good fun, as geeks were trying to make paper planes. There were some delays, with pretty nervous Zaiste marching around. But within couple minutes the show stopper was removed by Ori Pekelman’s superpowers and we could finally enter the theater. I will never forget the first feeling when we walked into the inner sphere of the building. It was just gorgeous.
Selected talks of the first day (in order of interest for me):
The Price of Speed: Lua or LuaJIT? with Etiene Dalcol
One of those “I love this programming language” talks and very well danced :-). You could see Etiene has deep knowledge about competing implementations of Lua programming language and she can see the darker sides of them. Last but not least she can give advice how to get the best of their usage.
And the place was full of Samba!

There is no Spoon? Understanding ‘Spoon Theory’ and Preventing Burnout with Jameson Hampton
In retrospective, this talk was maybe the deepest thought inducing at the conference. Jameson started with an introduction, which chilled. And she didn’t stop there, she opened the window to the world of the marginalized people, people in the pain, be it pain physical or psychological. Actually some of the things she said, I started to encounter in my circles and somehow I know better how to solve them. She was also one of those speakers who talk to attendees a lot.
Going Serverless with Wojtek Erbetowski
This is the topic, which I am studying a lot lately, and Wojtek served quite detailed overview of what the current buzz is all about. With some code examples and comparisons, this gave me the biggest technical takeaway of the first day.
ADA 99 — Rewriting the Very First Computer Program with Steven Goodwin
This was the very first talk of the conf, so some glitches still lurked, but Steven (The European), actually played very well with them and didn’t go sour because of it.
The talk was an eintopf of programming with some very old friend I haven’t seen for a quite long time. Hi ZX Spectrum Basic and Pascal.
Warm up party
A just small crowd gathered at the first-day party, but we who stayed had a good time. There is something funny to talk geeky things on the French Disco.
Selected talks of the second days (same order):
ZetaVM, a Platform to Enable Programming Language Innovation with Maxime Chevalier-Boisvert
This was the highlight from the pure programming point of view for me. I am in the search of the perfect VM since I left the SmallTalk world. Some full featured, general, modern virtual machine, which looks more at the joy of programmer and is correct. And ZetaVM seems to deliver on those and much more points, like code rotting, image format and ease of new language creation.
Also nice was the silence after Zaiste introduced this talk, followed by very calm, very focused presentation by Maxime.

You’re the Tech Lead! Now What? with Eryn O’Neil
This talk, on the other hand, was not technical at all, but the topics were those of the most pressing issues in our industry. What does it mean to be tech lead? What are the ways you should take in any phase of the software development? What are consequences of some decisions and how to avoid pitfalls? This I will definitely watch again once videos are online.
Creating and Using Your Own Programming Language with Victor Nicollet
Nice and complete showcase of creating a programming language to tackle complex use cases by clients of your application. And what does it take to create your own compiler team in the company?
Migrating Pinterest Profiles to React with Imad Elyafi
As a self-assigned React aficionado, I was interested in what one of the biggest web sites companies can say about migration to it. And I was not disappointed. The talk was full of examples and descriptions of how to get it all working, through organic and evolutionary replacement of old js stack with React one.
Adventures in Homoiconicity with Franziska Schmidt
Very high-speed overview of the one of the important property of my current number one language. If you want to know what homoiconicity means and how you can profit from the knowledge, this is the very good intro.
The Modern Prometheus with Piotr Szotkowski
A lot of code and speed comparisons, in one of the funniest presentations on the conference.
Why Pony? with Sean T Allen
If you need fast and very concurrent languages, Pony seems to deliver. I also liked the visuals of the presentation a lot.
Polyglot from the Very Old to the Very New with Chris Seaton
As a long time Rubyist it was interesting to see, what is in the making right now.
Open Source Governance Models with Myles Borins
Best slides of the conference!
Omnimax Projection
La Geode is not only a great venue for the conferences but also the best movie watching theater, I have ever been to. In combination with the topic of the movie, it was breathtaking. So thanks for spoiling my movie going for my whole life :-).
Huge Party
Frenetic place, very good discussions and cool down on the beach of the channel.
Selected talks of the last days (same order):
Programming Across Paradigms with Anjana Sofia Vakil
This talk ended my long running obsessions with the question of which programming paradigm is the best one. Is it object oriented programming? Or functional programming? Or even imperative programming? The answer seems to be none of them. As in so many cases, you should use the tool which meets your needs and prerequisites.
Again one of those very philosophical, very Polyconfy talks which I like the most. And again this was the one which was perfect visually and very entertaining. There are some very good and nice people at Mozilla.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running on the Web with Jack Moffitt
Another member of Mozilla team, but the talk from another end of the spectrum. Jack took us from what it means for something to be running on the web, through hard places of rendering today’s incarnation of the web, to the product they created. Servo, the product, is modern rendering core for next generation browsers and applications. Thanks to Rust programming language it is highly parallel, safe and very performant. Again a lot of good programming humor was inside. We are not tall enough.
Solidity — Programming Money on Blockchain* with Makoto Inoue
Very interesting example of programming with one of the hottest technology right now — The Blockchain. As I am very interested in this topic, and currently evaluating the technology (Ethereum in this case), I learned a lot from this talk. I also spent some quality time at the huge party with Makoto and he was very nice and very engaging.
*The title of the talk was changed, but I cannot find the new name.
Tearing Down Walls: Web APIs for Desktop Applications with Don Goodman-Wilson
Talk by one of the ScreenHero creators, which was at the time the most useful applications for me. Behind the curtain insights at its architecture and solutions to difficult problems in the implementation.
The Spectrum of Polymorphism with Jonathan Boccara
There are more kinds of the polymorphism than I thought. And this talk not only showed them to me but also recommended how to choose the right one.
One VM to Rule Them All with Gilles Duboscq
Another look at the Graal compiler, and how it can be used with Truffle to help us run our stuff on the JVM better.
Afterparty
In the beautiful space of the La Geode, we drunk some more beers and were disbanded for another year. Then the sky started to cry.
Final words
This year this summary took much more time for me to write. Talks were more diverse and more future oriented. The questions that were raised were more pressing and deeper. Things like workplace safety, good management of software projects and general direction of the software development.
I would like to thank Zaiste for creating the safe and very interesting place. It is my honor to know you, sir.

Also, my thoughts are with Ori Pekelman of Platform.sh, who worked on the limits of human possibilities at a time to make it happen.

If this trend in greatness continues, next year I will be in heaven, while attending Polyconf. And I hope I will meet you there!
