Look Who it Was Random video

Dr. Strangecode by Alex Snaps

1,642 views · Published 9 November 2017 · 44:32 · Indexed 4 November 2026

Channel: Devoxx · 2017 · Science & Technology

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or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Type System.
While dynamic languages show huge strengths when it comes to prototyping, static typing has the potential of bringing the peace of mind to developers that their code ships relatively bug-free. But wouldn't it be nice to ship with a very high level of confidence that the code is actually bug-free!

Yet many statically typed languages, including Java and C++, don't seem to provide us with that certainty. Why is that? What alternatives exist out there that might actually provide us with a higher degree of confidence that would enable us to say: It compiles? Ship it!

During this session we'll look at pitfalls of Java & C++ that keep on biting us: use-after-free, overflows, NullPointerExceptions, ConcurrentModificationException. We'll also look at how concurrency changed the way we might want to look at code. Finally, since some newer programming languages addressed some of these pains, we'll shed some light on how they go about these issues without necessarily concede on performance; getting it us to closer to the holy: It compiles, I'll just ship it! and confidently leave for the weekend!

# Alex Snaps
Alex spent most of his career on the JVM. Writing Java for over 15 years: on Ehcache, Quartz, Terracotta; in big enterprises, as well as for tiny startups. He's been part of the internal working group on JSR107 at Terracotta, an expert on JSR347 and one of the representative for Software AG on the JCP Executive Committee. Lately he's been busy doing stuff closer to the metal, trying to get every ounce of performance out of iPhones or out of very large clusters - as currently at Shopify where he's doing native development for the platform as a Lead Production Engineer. In his spare time he enjoys watching playing music, taking pictures & watching hockey… when not busy with his three kids! He runs Devoxx4kids in Quebec, where he also lives.

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