Thursday
Room 1
10:20 - 11:20
(UTC+02)
Talk (60 min)
Much ado about noping
Programming is asking the computer to do something… However, you can deliberately ask a computer to do nothing. In fact, there are many nothings to be asked of a computer. What do computers do when they have nothing to do? Why would you even want a computer to do nothing? You might unintentionally ask for nothingness. Or the compiler might ask for nothingness without you knowing.
Let’s explore what seems to be the opposite of programming: how we use nothingness in computing, different meanings for different nothingnesses. You’ll come out of this talk having learned Nothing. A deliberate, purposeful, mayhap useful Nothing.
JF Bastien
JF has worked on hardware, compilers, security, performance, web browsers, and airplanes. As chair of the C++ language evolution working group and co-designer of WebAssembly, his contributions have helped shape modern software development. More at jfbastien.com