pieceofpy.com

OOPSLA 2008

The Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications or more commonly referred to OOPSLA, annual conference is right around the corner. Oct 19th through the 23rd in Nashville, TN. I am trying to get my company to pay for me to go, but on such short notice, doubt it will happen, even so, I should be able to get paid time off to attend.

This years conference is looking to be a great one. As always they have a ton of workshops and tutorials and the keynotes this year look decent. I am particularly interested in the “Building Service-Oriented Architectures with Web Services” and “Test-Driven Hands On” tutorials. Those fall in to my line of work and I am always interested in seeing how others approach the same problems.

As for the keynotes,  Rebecca’s “What Drives Design” and Mark Dominus’ “Atypical Types” both spark my interest.

I recently renewed my ACCU and ACM memberships after letting them go for a couple years. I feel like I’ve done myself a disservice by letting these lapse.

Both of these organizations provided me with countless hours of information and insight as a younger developer and I attribute their journals and usergroups to helping me become the programmer I am today.

These organizations promote growth and learning and both have the goal of making people do what they do better. Easier, smarter, more efficient. I think any programmer who cares about their craft and improving their abilities should seriously look at joining one or both of these organizations.

If you’re a past member who has let their subscription lapse it might be time to look in to renewing it, it will pay for itself many times over.

• ACM – http://www.acm.org (a Plone site! Yes, seriously)
• ACCU – http://www.accu.org (member count seems thin, but content is still great)

Both give you nice print subscriptions to their journals and access to their mailing lists and discussions. ACM membership also affords you access to Books24×7 and Safari.