Brian Rice was a familiar face from Seattle MindCamp 2.0

Discussing functional programming in the back of the main room at Ruby's.

Maiden Outing to SeaFunc

This is the first gathering of the SeaFunc group that I ever attended.  I was at the restaurant early enough to have a sandwich and be settled reading.  I didn't know anyone in the group, I thought.  One fellow at another table said he was meeting a group and I figured we were going to be meeting together and not know it.  When I finally took out my Tablet PC, he noticed.  When others showed up, it all sorted out.

Brian Rice was also at Seattle MindCamp 2.0.  Although I recall him saying that he owned a Lisp Machine, I didn't think of him in connection with SeaFunc.  Later, in looking for a web link for Brian, I learned that we had more common interests than we knew, especially in the area of logic, language, and computation theory and perhaps a little Heidegger.

From Conversation to Stepping Out

It was Conal Elliott's reaction to my offhand remark about having worked with Peter Landin that led me to learn of Conal's interest in functional programming.  He told me after MindCamp 2.0 that there was a SeaFunc group, and we agreed that we would go to one of the meetings.  Conal later told me that he learned about SeaFunc from Brian.

The day of this SeaFunc meeting I spent the earlier part of the evening at University of Washington libraries.  It was too late to pick up a library card for myself but I was able to find all of Alonzo Church's early lambda-calculus papers in the catalog there.  I returned the next day to obtain my library card and to pour over all of the Church papers at the Mathematics Department library.

At the restaurants, we were surprised to be witnesses to the aftermath of a shooting, where the victim came into the restaurant, followed by the assailant, who quickly backed out of the restaurant and fled.  Because the restaurant was closed, we walked to the campus and found an area to sit and converse on one of the outside levels of the Law Library.  

Finding Common Interests

On our walk and at the pleasant outdoor veranda, I learned more of Jeff's background and also found some useful ways to look at my Miser Project in response to Jeff's questions.  We also talked a little about the difference between programming and working with software and working in mathematics.  I had some follow-on thoughts about that, and in checking with him at the next meeting, we had both realized that when you get to debugging and demonstrating that a program is correct, the mathematical similarity and the challenges of uncertainty over our results returns.

Jeff Henrikson listening in a conversation

More thoughtful conversation

I didn't capture names very well.  I did want to continue coming to the meetings that happen every third Tuesday. 

Inspiration for Getting It Out There

I had the idea that this would be an inspiration for me rolling up my sleeves and putting more content behind the Miser Project, Numbering Peano, and my own excursions into language, logic, and computation.

On the SeaFunc discussion list, I declared that I was going to do that, and have something new in my own content prior to each SeaFunc meeting.

I didn't accomplish that for the next meeting.  I am still up for it.

see also:

2006-05-19 Promising Work (on SeaFunc list)
2006-05-19 Promising Work update (on SeaFunc list)

created 2006-06-30-13:04 -0800 (pst) by orcmid
$$Author: Orcmid $
$$Date: 06-07-15 13:23 $
$$Revision: 11 $