I’m delighted to announce that I’m speaking at EmberConf 2021:

Title: Keep It Local — what “reasoning about your code” really means

Abstract: What do Steve McConnell’s variable scoping guidelines in Code Complete 2, pure functional programming, the data ownership system in Rust, classical object-oriented programming, the actor model in Erlang, and autotracking in Glimmer all have in common? Every one of them is aiming at the same key ingredient of robust, reliable software: the ability to “reason about your code.” But what does that actually mean?

This is a theme I’ve been thinking on directly for over half a decade, and which (as the talk will make clear) has been simmering for my entire career in software. I won’t give away the details, but I can say: this is far and away the most interesting talk I’ve ever worked on, and even in its current half-done state, it’s the one I’m most proud of. It’s very much a “big picture” kind of talk, with a fair bit of software development history involved, and a thesis that I hope will actually be helpful for the industry as a whole.