Farewell StrangeLoop
03 Oct 2023In 2009 when Alex ran the first StrangeLoop, I was a sophomore in High School. When I started hanging out in Clojure circles around 2013, StrangeLoop was the place to be. Rich had spoken there, Zach had spoken there, as would Joe, SPJ and many many more industry leaders.
I finally managed to join the fun in 2016, and to say I got to meet my entire Twitter feed in one place would be an understatement. I finally got to meet Chas, Daniel S. G., KF, fell in with the Papers We Love crew, saw some mind-bending talks and left beyond stoked to be back the next year. Since then, the annual trek to St. Louis (and Salt + Smoke) has been the highlight of the calendar socially and intellectually.
On more than one occasion I’ve quipped – and I stand by this –
Every year we get together in St. Louis to remember that computers are incredible and that we do enjoy using them
Particular standouts were Jose’s talk on the natural numbers which inspired me to start banging out a lazy thunk implementation of numerics that very night
Lea’s discourse on nitting
Marlow’s talk on Haxel which made me finally understand transaction logs / monads and on which I’ve shamelessly based … approximately everything I’ve built since
Janelle’s absolutely hysterical talk on playing with ML
Sarah’s incredible talk on DIYing up her own pancreas
Felienne’s fascinating experience report of trying to design a language which isn’t simple in any sense but is approachable and the constraints that imposed
Just to pick a handful of talks which I had the pleasure of attending.
And now, the løøp as one chat group long called it is over. It will be sorely missed.
Thank you Alex, Crystal, Nick, Ryan, Mario, and everyone else who helped make the venue as special and magical as it was. Whether you knew it or not this project and its community defined my career in more ways than I could count.
And every year reminded me that computers can be fun, and there is art in what we do.
^d