The last day of the conference is a short one, just keynotes (or plenary sessions, I guess) and two technical sessions. But it’s a strong one. One of the keynotes was from Tim Bray who raised all sorts of interesting questions about where programming languages are going. He didn’t have the answers, just questions.
Bray’s session was the only one that I found really interesting, but lots of the attendees were more interested in Sam Ramji‘s talk. He’s from Microsoft, and was a target of plenty of pointless Microsoft bashing by “questioners”. Microsoft is taking good actions now, and the only sensible thing to do is wait and watch its behavior going forward, instead of announcing that it will behave badly no matter what.
The sessions I’m going to are Ray Fielding‘s talk on Open Architecture at REST, and Damian Conway‘s The Twilight Perl. I think they’ll be a very strong close to a good conference.
I skipped the last two OSCONs because the one three years ago was practically worthless, but the program looked so good this year that I gave it another chance. I’m glad I did.
But I still wish they’d have a more full last day. It’s short so the west coast folks can catch a late flight home, but the majority of attendees have to fly east, and can’t do that until early tomorrow morning.
Charles Engelke's Blog 