OOPSLA 2008 day one - archaeology, response to Fred Brooks

Tuesday officially began OOPSLA 2008. The day started off with a keynote from Mark Lehner, an archaeologist who found, after being invited to talk at OOPSLA, surprising parallels between his work in Egypt and reading about Grady Booch's work. I found his talk to be quite illuminating, both in terms of Egypt and how we can learn lessons from that field and apply them to software engineering.

Next up, I attended Dick Gabriel's essay titled "Designed as Designer". It was an extended reaction to Fred Brooks' OOPSLA 2007 keynote. Gabriel argued that Brooks puts too much emphasis on the single software designer, whereas everyone takes in input from around them in ways big and small.

In the afternoon, I chaired a lightning talks session. The session turned into an extended hallway conversation as we discussed both Gabriel's and Lehner's talks. One of my favourite parts of OOPSLA is the hallway conversation; this session allowed me to chat with people that I might not otherwise have done and learn what their responses were to these sessions.

Every time I come here, I'm always impressed by the people that I meet in the sessions and outside of them. As a result, I always look forward to October.