We love hearing about different meetups so when we found out about this (un)Meetup at Tapad HQ in New York we wanted to hear all about it! Check out this blog post on how it went.
'The July (un)Meetup was organized by NY-Scala and NY-Purescript at Tapad HQ. Below is a brief account of the (un)Meetup experience. You won’t want to miss the next one(s)!
What’s an “(un)Meetup”?
As Dustin Whitney, NY-scala organizer, put it, “The idea of this meetup is born out of the ‘unconference’ format, which means it’s loosely organized and community driven.” The organizers and members are encouraged to prepare topics. These can be topics that they either specialize in or are interested in learning more about. The topics are pitched to the group and followed by a discussion. This format gives the attendees the option to attend the topic they find most interesting instead of being ‘forced’ to focus on just one. In addition, they are free to hop around if desired.
The Event Breakdown:
The event started at 7pm. This allowed people to attend after their work day. After the attendees signed in they made their way back to the Tapad Bistro (kitchen) where pizza and beverages were waiting.
At the beginning of the meetup Dustin Whitney, Stewart Stewart, and Lance Gatlin pitched their topics.The 30 attendees then broke off into groups to address the topic/s of their choice. Take a look at what some of the engineers had to say:
Franklin Chou, Software Engineer at PeerIQ, @franklinchou
“I participated in Stewart’s @stewSqrd group which was about Dotty. I learned a tremendous amount about how Dotty (Scala 3) employs types. Really powerful stuff for leveraging type-systems to write robust software. Then I caught the end of Dustin’s presentation re: Purescript. Really cool stuff that I wasn’t able to follow technically but visually stunning. It showcases what other developers using typesafe languages can accomplish and how it can be applied to Front End work. A fantastic spot to meetup and hope to do many more at Tapad!”
Daniel Gasienica, Software Engineer, @gasi
“I think it was great the Scala + PureScript communities were brought together to cross-pollinate ideas. The (un)meetup format was a good way to ensure participants could learn about what’s relevant to them and their work. Tapad offered a warm welcome, functional spaces, and yummy food to keep our energy levels high! The talent team were wonderful hosts as well.”
Oleksii Iepishkin, Software Engineer at Tapad, @epishkin
“I met a guy who works at Jetbrains and he explained how intellij imports sbt projects. I shared some pains with him and he suggested an improvement to intellij scala plugin that he quickly implemented. The trick was to split the feature `Use sbt shell` into 2 tasks where each could be enabled separately `for imports` and/or `for builds`. This could be useful to people who cannot select `Use sbt shell` feature due to issues with builds but can still use `for imports` to make importing a project faster!
Even if you don’t know how to contribute to an open source scala project there are still ways to make them better! Meet contributors, discuss uses of the tools and issues. Together you can make them better!”
Johnny Chang, Investment Engineer at Bridgewater Associates,
“Stewart Stewart’s session was great — some of the upcoming things in Scala 3 are pretty awesome. We went through live demos on union/intersection types and transparent/opaque types, but what really kicked it to the next level was the amount of collaboration. One of us would ask a question and Stuart went “let’s find out!” and we’d construct an example live to answer the question. Great experience — would attend again in a heartbeat; the cool office and delicious snacks help, too :) (s/o to chocolate covered almonds and the nut clusters)”
The topic discussions wrapped up before 9pm, but because the drinks were flowing and conversations were going we stuck around a bit later to enjoy the company.
People were genuinely having a great time learning and openly ideating with one another. It was awesome to see the communities join forces and collaborate on technical, and not so technical, ideas.
If you want to join in on the fun, follow us on Twitter for upcoming events @TapadEng.'
This article was written by and originally published on Tapad Engineering.