I’m registering for OSCON, and Suzanne Axtell asked me to say some kind words about the conference. I always have trouble deciding which tutorials to take.

This year, my candidates are:

  • Pthreads Programming: A Hands-on Introduction.

    For as little as I believe that shared-state multithreading is the best way for concurrent programming, it exists and works in plenty of applications and languages and libraries today. Adrien has never quite convinced me that pthreads are the right approach, but I’m willing to learn.

  • Hardware / Software Hacking: Joining the Real and the Virtual

    Second Life never quite captured my imagination, but I’ve spent enough time programming virtual things that the idea of programming actual things holds a lot of appeal. Ward Cunningham was a minor hit at Foo Camp a couple of years ago with a very simple flag-waving microcontroller he and his son built. Paying attention to Ward always pays off.

  • A Taste of Haskell

    I know just enough Haskell to be dangerous (and to push for Real World Haskell). While waiting for the book, I can’t resist an introduction from Simon Peyton-Jones.

  • New Parallel Programming Tools for a Multicore World

    Even if I remain dubious about pthreads, I can’t deny that my current laptop isn’t an order of magnitude faster than my previous laptop, but it does have more cores. I won’t be writing a Fast Fourier Transform any time soon, but I’d like to take advantage of parallelization wherever possible.

  • Simple Ways To Be a Better Programmer

    Plenty of failures of software development are process problems. Plenty of good developers would like to write better software, but run into trouble with co-workers and managers and company policies. Schwern’s been asking some of the best programmers he knows for advice, and I’m curious to see what advice he has for people who can’t throw out everything and start afresh. (My suggestions: “Learn to recognize and appreciate simplicity. Develop an aesthetic for good code.”)

Of course, WSGI interests me, and I’m curious about Django. It’s also always worthwhile to see MJD speak….