9:30 AM Saturday Room: Town Square A
JSON has become the world's best loved data interchange format. This is
the true story of the discovery of JSON and an explanation of why it is
the way it is. Advice to designers of the next standard will be provided.
Everyone who attends will receive a prize (while supplies last). 11:00 AM Saturday Room: Town Square A
Fundamentally, the only thing that computers can do is manipulate
numbers. In many ways, the computer's numbers act much like the numbers
we were taught in school. But in some (perhaps surprising) ways, they
behave very differently. Disastrous bugs have resulted from lack of deep
understanding of the differences. Most programmers are not trained or
even warned about these differences, making them a danger to themselves
and others.
This talk will look at the nature and history of numbers, with
recommendations for how we can make better numbers in the future.