SF Scala: Seth Tisue Interview
Recording: SF Scala: Seth Tisue Interview
[Music] hello everybody I'm Alexa crab Roe the organizer CEPS kala and here with us for the first time we have surfed you who is member flight band scala team and he used to be one of the organizers of boston skull enthusiasts which i attended as early 2009 when I start my scoliosis so it's really great to finally have staff here with us from the the right coast and so he's our local local Scala live band expert now and he is gonna do his fair stock and enough Scala tonight so we're super excited to have Seth was here Seth can you outline your luster skull history for us how did you get into that you know how did use you know join the bosons column it up and like can you tell us will you arc what you know sure so I had been before getting even into Java which I did for years I'd been a Common Lisp programmer so I knew what it felt like to work in language that's really expressive and powerful so the whole time I was working in Java I was kind of unhappy and wished that circumstances permitted something different so in 2008 I started looking around at alternate jvm languages the the alt JVM scene what was really just taking off around that time so I looked at groovy and closure and Scala mm-hm and fell in love with Scala I've been writing Scala code full-time ever since and just so you sort of Lisp why not closure you know there's an alternate universe where where I went down the closure path and I think what saved me is that in in early 2008 closure was really not that mature yet and it also the Java Interop was not as smooth as as scholars I had this you know two hundred thousand lines of job to contend with this is not greenfield stuff so so Scala was better at that interesting yeah I actually looked at closure about the same time right because I I needed to process a bunch of tutor data and so I remember vividly but I didn't need to do that drop with Java it looks very you know it looked very cute so so let's see so how like what was he like first projects was called how did you start using it you know I was so the the job that I had writing Java code was the same job that I had for for 14 years so I just stayed at that job and was able to convince the professor that I worked for that it would be okay to start using Scala in addition to Java mm-hm so this this was a project called net logo it's a programming language a dialect of logo the turtle language for four kids we did a like an advanced dialect of load road that was powerful enough for scientists to to use to make simulations in so that used it's it's doing okay you know it's hanging in there yeah I mean I remember you know I remember yeah so there certainly hasn't been any big comeback but you know the net order project continues and it's doing fine and so it's it's a teaching language so you can teach kids yes and then the fact that it's easy enough for kids also makes it accessible to researchers who are not professional programmers but want to program mm-hmm so how did Java so basically Lisbeth and Java and Scala so did Java kind of interject this static typing mentality which then kind of pushed you towards column or it did yeah so you know I said that I was unhappy working in Java but I will say that that it did you know give me some appreciation for the value of types so I you know we had a lot of code 200,000 lines small team you know between two and four programmers working on that much code I really think we could not have done it without the type system you know even the relatively simple type system of Java to help us and so that I think that opened my mind to going all-in on types with Scala mm-hmm and the process of self was mundane said many years so you probably have called written over many millions for years and Covey's yes yeah that I mean that that's actually what what my talk today is about is tools that help you cope with that situation cope with big messy legacy code bases and try to try and whip them into shape and just you know to keep them from just getting Messier and Messier as the years go on you see so can kind of tell us a little bit about how Boston skull enthusiasts came together what was the mood like them what you know what was it that attracted a lot of furless color developers to the language so I was not one of the cofounders of Boston Scala but I did attend right from the start and then you know jumped in as an organizer when the one there was an opening that was an exciting time to be going to Scala meetups in Boston because it turned out that there were a lot of people in Boston at the time who turned out to be important to Scala Marc Hera the author of SBT Paul G Asano and Runa Arneson the authors of functional programming in Scala and a number of other key people so it was we had really good people right from the start and I think that's part of what what made it exciting do company uy like those of this like pockets of school excellence in Boston what was the reason I guess I mean you know Boston just has a concentration of highly educated people right in the tech schools and like yeah yeah and so you know for scholar coming out of acronym world I think that seems natural mm-hmm so what was your first non-trivial so so basically there's a Legacy Project and you you bought the skull of the woods what was like the first Greenfield new scholar project you did which was really exciting I would have to say never I've never written Greenfield Greenfield code in scala now I'm serious is that really true you know the the the project that I'm presenting today was actually a greenfield project it's a small one it's it's it's for extracting dependency information from from Scala code using it using a compiler plugin so that was actually Greenfield but you know no like my experience is really like legacy Java code how do we gradually move into the end of the scala world and what is your focus at LED bent right now how does that connect to your main kind of job responsibilities so I'm mainly working on the build and testing infrastructure around Scala so PR validation the scala community build I'm the the primary maintainer of that and have been for for a few years now and on you know encouraging and and shepherding open source contributions so it's often me who's the liaison between the the team and the broader open source community so should all this color pressures in the world be in the community build or is it just like a set of well-known big projects how do people get onto the community build and should they we we try to have all of the all of the all of the most popular libraries there's actually about a hundred and fifty okay pardon me there's about a hundred and fifty projects in the build right now and it's mainly libraries that other people depend on we do have a sprinkling of applications just to increase the diversity a little bit but the basic answer is if your library's popular what we're it's probably already in there or we would be interested in adding it mm-hmm okay cool so I guess you know I can ask you unless questions but you will you're coming through back through the hearing you you send us an amazing list of potential talks so we can you know invited to give all of them it's just a question well I'd love to come back so several times this year so maybe like one last question I will ask how do you so far right there's a new kind of transplant of what comes what are your impressions about like is there any difference in in the scene in the community scene or is it all a big global community doesn't matter where you live and work is there anything interesting you can kind of share between the difference between you know by area and both of roses it certainly is different just that there are so many programmers and so many people in tech here that it's normal to just be out on the street or the coffee shop and people are talking about code or you know talking about their startups or whatever and that's just everywhere there's certainly a fair amount of that in Boston but it's much more it's much more it's more unusual you know like you someone asks you what you do you say oh I'm a programmer and they're like oh that's interesting in San Francisco it's like oh you know we know about that and there's too many of you you know why'd you move here and make the rest go up all right well that's fair enough but we are super happy to have you here with us now with all the you know great scholar knowledge you buddy so we're looking forward to talking definitely too haven't you it's a scholar through the year and go for it thank you right thank you very much you [Music]