Chris Birchall
Chris is a principal software developer at OVO Energy, where he looks after authentication and personal data as a member of the Identity team. He is the author of the ScalaCache library. He has been using Scala for work and play since 2010.
Follow Chris on Twitter and check out the ScalaCache library.
Talks I've Given
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Writing an SBT Plugin
Featuring Chris Birchall
First I'd like to introduce sbt-explicit-dependencies, an sbt plugin I made recently. I'll explain what it does, why you should consider using it, and how it works under the hood. In the second half of the talk I'll give a beginner's guide to writing an sbt plugin, including how...
scala plugin sbt -
Lightning Talk: N Features that Scala Should Steal From Other Languages
Featuring Chris Birchall
If you want Scala to evolve in a healthy manner, you should keep an eye on the state of the art in other modern languages. Let's re-use their good ideas and avoid reinventing wheels.
In this talk Chris will share with you some interesting features and ideas he's found in other languages,...
scala scalax ml rust idris haskell -
Reinforcement Learning in Scala
Featuring Chris Birchall
Reinforcement learning (RL) is a powerful machine learning paradigm that has been successfully applied to a wide class of problems, from steering helicopters to predicting stock prices. During this talk you will find out what RL is all about and how to implement it in Scala. Chris will introduce...
scala temporal-difference-learning reinforcement-learning scalax -
Architecting a web application in a functional style
Featuring Chris Birchall
A problem that many people face as they learn functional programming is the disconnect between understanding individual FP concepts and understanding how to apply those concepts in real programs. Even after learning about type classes, Kleisli, State, etc., it can be hard to make the leap to...
ddd functional functional-programming scala -
Free vs tagless final with Chris Birchall!
Featuring Chris Birchall
Recently free monads are gaining popularity as a way of implementing embedded DSLs in order to separate a program's description from its execution. So-called "tagless final" style is a less well-known but equally powerful way of achieving the same result. Join Chris at this months...
functional -
Meta-program and/or shapeless all the things!
Featuring Chris Birchall
Metaprogramming using Scala macros is a powerful tool for code generation, automatic optimisation and static checking for improved safety. But macros can look quite scary the first time you see them, so I'll try to convince you that there is nothing to fear. Macros are both useful and fun!
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A deep dive into scalac
Featuring Chris Birchall
Ever since Chris heard the rumour that compilation involved 27 phases, he has kept his distance from scalac, telling himself that people smarter than him were taking care of it. But it's time to stop living in ignorance and fear. Let's tame the compiler!
scalac scala java-bytecodecomplication typeclasses cake-pattern