The Diversity

The ratio of all the genders was almost on the level of the last Polyconf, and that was made diverse by design. Here it was much more organic. On PyCon you could meet people from all the spectrum. Big love for this!
We are all equal, and here it showed.

The Food

The food was abundant on the first floor, and it was there all the time, or at least until the main programme ran. What I liked the most, it was just ordinary food, nothing too fancy. Still, it was delicious, well prepared, well served. Pasta salads, nom nom, and cookies. And from what I gathered it was made in the protected workshop (sorry if it is not the right word for chráněná dílna, blame Google Translate). So eating there, you were helping some people in need, now you can see why I ate so much!
Same for the tea and coffee. And if the pizza came, it was by two cars, no less!
But what blew my mind, was that all the surplus was at the Sunday morning escorted, together with drum playing fool, by taxi to homeless guys.
We are all in this together, see?

Not talks

Another thing I appreciate on confs was what happened in the lobby, chillouts and everywhere outside of the Main and Theatre. Everybody was talking, laughing, hacking, playing musical instruments. I made more new friends in two days, that in the last year. And made the old friendships lasting for life.
You say toys? Oh, boy have seen all the people in the zoom boxes? Playing exotic instruments, electronic or small drums?
Meet the people, cause they are diamonds in the rocks.

The Music

I am a music lover. I cannot work efficiently without my Mixcloud stream, and my kids cannot fell asleep without my lullabies. I know I already raved about this in the report, but who cares. If there were music average in the world as it was here, it would be a much better place. All kinds of music: live played instruments, reproduced or generated on the spot.
So always look on the bright side of life!

See you next year in the !!!

When I came in the morning, I have met Stařenka and couple guys from the oldest group of Pythonistas, namely Dan Srb and Kvbik. Even as they were solving the usual problems of every conference I have ever been to, there were good laughs, and I hadn’t noticed any discontent of the visitors. Well guys behind me were calling with their company and uttered some swear words about their boss in the process.

Then I moved to the back chill zone for chit-chat with Míšo before the start. The theme for the first keynote was some of the hottest in our industry these days: to remote or not remote. One of those rare duet talks and I enjoyed it a lot. Especially the notion that this problem is reducible to: to wear pants or not to wear pants. I took away some advice, even as I am moving to an office after quite long time.

Next talk I attended was machine learning sentiment rating. It was accessible and in the great rhythm with many jokes and winks. My Python knowledge was just enough so I could follow it without a problem and got a good general overview of the problem. Also, in the talk, there was only one evil math character!

Strengthen by this success I decided to visit the DataFrames talk. However, my PyFu ended before the doors of this talk, and also theatre temperature was over my self-regulating possibilities. I move to dunder methods talk and found my knowledge of the language lacking again.

Also, the beer kiosk opened. The rest of the day I spent in the spirit of the lobby conference life. I have met many people I knew from other communities and many new ones. I have talked about my contemporary point of view, and to my surprise, people were listening and thinking about what I was saying without any flame wars. One of this kind of discussion was with David Majda whom I consider one of the best computer scientists, at least Czech ones. I missed the board games night, but when I visited it, I was smitten by how many people were having good fun there. As the midnight approached, we packed up and went to sleep.

Saturday morning fresh and new, we again gathered in MeetFactory and started the second day with some excellent tea and coffee. The first talk I have seen was how and why to teach kids programming, and it was one of the best talks I have ever seen. So close to my heart, it brought tears to my eyes couple of the times. Duet again, but mostly serial, by the parents, about things they love to do. Light on tech but heavy on ideas and sheer love. For me the highest point of the whole conference. Bravo bravo bravo.

The second talk I went was about security and how to use marketing techniques for the higher success rate of the account hacking. Python was in the second plane again. Still, the love for the language was everywhere. If I would be hacking some account, I would first watch this talk again. Especially e-shop hacking part was gorgeous.

Then again I moved to chill areas talking with friends old and new and had great fun. No traces of any elitism, which is many times present on the events like this. Just friendship and goodwill. Even my everpresent doom sayer pose was funnier than looming. You know you are in the right company when you hear ukulele every couple of minutes, usually with a singing voice, even if it is mostly Ring of Fire.

One last talk I wanted to see, and I managed it, even when it ran long after they opened beer kiosk. It was about algorave live coded music. I played with Sonic Pi in my days, and I was not disappointed with this talk. Well, there was the demonstration at the end of the talk, and later at the afterparty. Again music.

I stayed for the lightning talks, and the glorious end, where the big group played Always look on the Bright Side of Life on all the ukuleles and some guitars and other instruments on the stage and all the attendees sang along. It was like a spark of that cosmic power. “Tears in my eyes 2.0”. Goodbye from the organizers and afterparty, till the morning. I wish I have a better recollection of it, but suffice to say I found my self in the morning light playing a small drum if it even means anything.

You may wonder, where is the part about food, venue or diversity as staples in this kind of reports. Well, those were great, any of them. Most of all, I loved the atmosphere! I have been to quite a number of the conferences in my life but never experienced anything like this. Big love to all the people involved, you are the best!

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!

So after two years, I am back with the summary of how I spent three days in the very beautiful Poznań.

Yes you are guessing right, I am back to write down my experience from this years' Polyconf. And men it was a ride. How did it started actually? I picked up my good friend Michal Valášek in my hometown, and we went for the road. We talked about work, the state of the world and the polish highways. I really think, that it is a good part of the conference for me, as you can touch many things in 5+ hours of car drive. After the accommodation in the hostel, we went for a little chit chat on the first warm-up party. We've met some people and were talking some programmers stuff. You probably know the drill.

First day of the conference has started with one of the first worlds' worst problems: I have lost my wallet with almost no money, ID, drivers license and payment cards at the Kebab. Or in the moment, I still had hope, that I just parted with it for a short time.

But without big hesitation, we went to a venue and started our thing. For me it was organization of the workshop. I will not go into details, but I guess it was good and inspiring for the folks, who gathered in the morning of the first day.

Selected talks of the first day (in order of interest for me):

Becoming a Polyglot — APIs in 4 Languages by Kirsten Hunter

Mature talk about mature languages by mature woman. Great style and points about all 4 languages by someone, who really understands API. Delight.

Introducing clojure.spec by Arne Brasseur

Clojure.spec is young and hot in Clojure world, and I am trying to know as much as possible about it. Arne did great intro into it and have some good points, I did not considered before.

Elm for JavaScript Developers by Jack Franklin

I have seen Jack talking two years ago on Polyconf about JS. It was good, but about something I did not appreciated that much. Not this year, I have Elm in my spotlight for quite a long time, and Jack had his say, which I understood and liked. And great style and fun.

Dynamics of change: why reactivity matters by Andre Staltz

I have seen Andre talking for the first time, but I heard a lot about it before. And was not disappointed, through many cycles we got to the conclusion: Cycle.js ;). Again great style.

The soccer party after first day was fun, crowdy and sad at the end.

Selected talks of the second days (same order):

The Seif Project by Douglas Crockford

This is The Talk of the conference for me. Not only, that it was done by The Legend:

We use the JSON for communication, well because I like it

Not only it was funny as hell:

At the beginning computers security was provided by soldiers.

Not only it was on point:

JavaScript was designed in ten days, and it turned out that many mistakes can be done in ten days.

Crappy Style Sheets.

But it was about one of the biggest issues today's web have: security. And Douglas showed, that not only he can see the threats, but he has solutions for them. I do not want to spoil the conclusion, go and watch the talk, after it becomes available.

Why System Programming is for Everyone by Julia Evans

The second best talk of the conference. And for sure the most dynamic, beautiful and convincing. Great, wizard inspired story, backend by superb demos. Julia also showed great reaction at the end of the talk I will describe next.

The Linguistic Relativity of Programming Languages by Jenna Zeigen

This is the kind of talks I like the most on the Polyconf, philosophical deep thoughts not necessarily only about programming. Little bit of nervosity have not overshadowed the appearance. Kudos!

Pick Your Battles by Zef Hemel

Talk about early adopting, and how bad it can be for your startup. I am actually on the other side of the barricade on this issue, but fun and experience is always convincing for me.

OOP -> FP by Julia Gao

Super 101 on FP, highly recomended.

The bowling party was great again, even though I do not play it ;). What I like is meeting new smart people and those are galore on Polyconf.

Selected talks of the third day (same order):

It must be said, that we had to leave at 3pm, and have not seen last four talks.

Exploring The Universal Library by Szymon Kaliski

Similar to Jenna's, this talk was less about the programming and more about the space, we are living in. And I really like creative people.

Language-agnostic static analysis with abstract ASTs by Marcin Wyszyński

Really teoretically deep talk with this dry sense of humour, only programmers can understand:

I won't be making cheap jokes about PHP, it will be like flapping dead horse. Well it seems I just made cheap joke.

And I recognized Swift ;).

Datomic in production, 1 year in by Hans Hübner

I dreamed about using Datomic for my project for as long as I started with Clojure programming. And this talk was what gets your feets back on the ground. Thank you Hans.

I love power tools.

Clojure is tasty language.

Erlang in The Land of Lisp by Jan Stępień

Get out of the box, try new things. Also the shining eyes Jan had, made me happy.

Conclusion

This years' Polyconf was the best conference ever! Period. Hope to see you there next year.

Diversity united! Big love for Zaiste from Czechoslovakia!

PS: All the quotes are from my memory ;).

verdict — pepe — Josef Pospíšil

Josef is definitely a senior Ruby developer. No objections.

Feedback:
He used some exotic technologies to solve our problem and it proves that he is capable to learn new things fast.
His code is clean and properly covered by tests. So it’s easy to change in the future.
I like the way Josef structured his code and separated business domain from control logic.
Regularity of providing new changes to solution repository with appropriate comments and README updates shows that he is well organized and deliver on time.

First of all big thanks to the organizing team. For me everything went quite smooth, with just one exception of the first day meal, but one exception is making the rule (or this is what they told us in czech grammar classes), and it had happy conclusion. The parties and everything overall went just like hot knife through the butter. So I would say A- is right mark.

Second and most important was the agenda and content presented on the conference which was above the par in every aspect for me. From every point of view, I have heard about things I have longed so long to get some touch with, many things I have never imagined, and then some I would never said, I will meet on the IT/CS conference. I will try to describe my top ten in the order of the impact on me:

States and nomads

It seems chat (and great fun. Clap on Closure anyone?) I had with Zach on the party night before, somehow opened my mind to all the highest concepts, he was talking about, but definitely one of the best talks I have ever heard. Maybe the elevated state of the hangover, I don’t know.

The comparisons and metaphors, Zach used, turned my head up to those plateaus the best knowledge resides on. And from this point in the time I will never think about the programming the same. I will always see the forrest and will always try to be nomad in my mind. I will always think about the right size and detail of the map. And well be little bit of afraid of the Morlocks.

If I would like to be only on one talk this would be it. Thank you again Zach for heads-up. This quality really had a name.

Forerunners

Flow-Based Programming For JavaScript — thing I was thinking about for very long time in the very smooth presentation. I think this is one of the biggest part of the future of the programming. Especially chat on first day after party opened some great insights and closed some doubts. Special thanks to Henri for the best stickers.

The Value Of Diversity And Other Lessons From Biology— great talk about how nature develops new systems and what we could learn from it. Things I am thinking for long time in the right package. And then remixed, relativized, and explained again. Thank you Gareth.

How to become a great developer and have a life too — totally unexpected look at our lives as programmers. And then _zing_ it made sense. We are dreamers of dreams, creators of the air castles and the most important asset in our toolbox is our mind. Thank you Adam.

Testing the Hard Stuff and Staying Sane — last but not least important (here I just wanted to respect the appearance). Maybe most balanced form technical and real life advice points. Generated tests makes so much sense for the unit tests, that I already started to play with them. The two best giveaways: the goal of the computer engineer is to avoid blame and never tune your radio when you are emergency breaking, big thanks for them John.

Bits

Taiga.io — I loved to talk with Alejandro about the labor of love. Keep up great work!

Immutability: Putting The Dream Machine to Work — really great speak in term of presentation. Also good insights.

How to become an agile company — great enthusiasm and interesting point of view.

Writing Snake game in ClojureScript with React — best live-coding session ever. Period!

Bridging the gap — one API, 5 languages — already heard the Ruby version, so no surprises. But you gotta like Honza’s style.

Well all the talks I saw was good. These just made dent in my mental map of the field.

Social

For the very end I spared the social aspect of the conference, which I found amazing.

Special thanks to David and Martin for the best nerd chat in the car.

Thank you all and see you next year!