Belfast Chapter
What was the last paper within the realm of computing you read and loved? What did it inspire you to build or tinker with? Come share the ideas in an awesome academic/research paper with fellow engineers, programmers, and paper-readers. Lead a session and show off code that you wrote that implements these ideas or just give us the lowdown about the paper (because of HARD MATH!). Otherwise, just come, listen, and discuss.
The Belfast Chapter meets every 2-3 months at different locations throughout the city, and has been runninng since October 2016. Keep an eye on our Meetup.com page to find out the latest address.
Papers We Love has a Code of Conduct. Please contact one of the Meetup's organizers if anyone is not following it. Be good to each other and to the PWL community!
Chapter Details
Sign-up: Please RSVP for meetings via Meetup.com
Twitter: @PWLBelfast
Organizers: Jolene Dunne and Philip Lawson
Chapter Meetups
Clean Architecture
Papers We Love Belfast's book club has selected Clean Architecture by Robert Martin as our next book. The aim is to hold a monthly book club for programmers to get together and discuss a "must-read" CS text.
Trello board (https://trello.com/b/62VsZyZj/papers-we-love-belfast-book-club) to vote for upcoming books.
On August 18th we'll be discussing the book in full. It is not required to read the book before attending the group, but recommended to get the most out of the discussion.
Please consider joining us for lunch/coffee and some interesting conversation. Hope to see you there!
…Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Part III
Papers We Love Belfast's book club has selected "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (freely available under MIT licence, lots of versions available incl. https://github.com/sarabander/sicp-pocket) as our next book. The aim is to hold a monthly book club for programmers to get together and discuss a "must-read" CS text.
Trello board (https://trello.com/b/62VsZyZj/papers-we-love-belfast-book-club) to vote for upcoming books.
On July 21st we'll be discussing the latter half of Chapter IV (from Section 4.3 Variations on a Scheme - Nondeterministic Computing) and Chapter V. It is not required to read the book before attending the group, but recommended to get the most out of the discussion.
To help solidify some of the concepts we've been learning for the last few weeks we have chosen …
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Part II
Papers We Love Belfast's book club has selected "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (freely available under MIT licence, lots of versions available incl. https://github.com/sarabander/sicp-pocket) as our next book. The aim is to hold a monthly book club for programmers to get together and discuss a "must-read" CS text.
Trello board (https://trello.com/b/62VsZyZj/papers-we-love-belfast-book-club) to vote for upcoming books.
On June 16th we'll be discussing Chapters III and half of Chapter IV (up to Section 4.3 Variations on a Scheme - Nondeterministic Computing). It is not required to read the book before attending the group, but probably recommended to get the most out of the discussion.
Please consider joining us for lunch/coffee and some interesting conversation. Hope to see you…
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Chapters I&II
Papers We Love Belfast's book club has selected "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (freely available under MIT licence, lots of versions available incl. https://github.com/sarabander/sicp-pocket) as our next book. The aim is to hold a monthly book club for programmers to get together and discuss a "must-read" CS text.
Trello board (https://trello.com/b/62VsZyZj/papers-we-love-belfast-book-club) to vote for upcoming books.
On May 19th we'll be discussing Chapters I and II. It is not required to read the book before attending the group, but probably recommended to get the most out of the discussion.
Please consider joining us for lunch/coffee and some interesting conversation. Hope to see you there!
…Book Club - 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know, Part II
Papers We Love Belfast's book club has selected "97 Things Every Programmer Should Know" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-Every-Programmer-Should-Know/dp/0596809484 or https://jf-blog.fr/download/59/) as our next book. The aim is to hold a monthly book club for programmers to get together and discuss a "must-read" CS text.
Trello board (https://trello.com/b/62VsZyZj/papers-we-love-belfast-book-club) to vote for upcoming books.
On April 14th we'll be discussing the second half of the book, from the chapter "Learn to Say 'Hello World'" to the end. It is not required to read the book before attending the group, but probably recommended to get the most out of the discussion.
Please consider joining us for…
Book Club - 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know
Papers We Love Belfast's book club has selected "97 Things Every Programmer Should Know" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-Every-Programmer-Should-Know/dp/0596809484 or https://jf-blog.fr/download/59/) as our next book. The aim is to hold a monthly book club for programmers to get together and discuss a "must-read" CS text.
Trello board (https://trello.com/b/62VsZyZj/papers-we-love-belfast-book-club) to vote for upcoming books.
On March 10th we'll be discussing the first half of the book, from the beginning up to and incl. "Learn to Estimate". It is not required to read the book before attending the group, but probably recommended to get the most out of the discussion.
Please consider joining us for lu…
Book Club - How To Solve It
Papers We Love Belfast's book club has selected Polya's How To Solve It (https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Solve-Mathematical-Princeton-Science/dp/069116407X/ref=dp_ob_title_bk) as our next book. The aim is to hold a monthly book club for programmers to get together and discuss a "must-read" CS text.
Trello board (https://trello.com/b/62VsZyZj/papers-we-love-belfast-book-club) to vote for upcoming books.
On February 10th we'll be discussing the full book to the end, it is not required to read the book before attending the group, but probably recommended to get the most out of the discussion.
Please consider joining us for lunch/coffee and some interesting conversation. Hope to see you there!
…Book Club - The Mythical Man Month
Papers We Love Belfast's book club has selected The Mythical Man Month as our next book. The aim is to hold a monthly book club for programmers to get together and discuss a "must-read" CS text.
Trello board (https://trello.com/b/62VsZyZj/papers-we-love-belfast-book-club) to vote for upcoming books.
On January 13th we'll be discussing the full book to the end, it's not that long so hopefully this will be ok. It is not required to read the book before attending the group, but probably recommended to get the most out of the discussion.
Please consider joining us for lunch/coffee and some interesting conversation. Hope to see you there!
…PWL Book Club #3 - "Category Theory For Programmers"
Papers We Love Belfast's new and experimental book club has selected Milewski's Category Theory for Programmers (https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-programmers-the-preface/) as our first book. The aim is to hold a monthly book club for programmers to get together and discuss a "must-read" CS text.
Trello board (https://trello.com/b/62VsZyZj/papers-we-love-belfast-book-club) to vote for upcoming books.
On December 9th we'll be discussing the final chapters of the book, from Part 3: Chapter 4, "Monads: Programmers's Definition" to the end. It is not required to read the book before attending the group, but probably recommended to get the most out of the discussion.
Please consider joining us for lunch/coffee and some interesting conv…
Papers We Love Belfast #5 - Knuth, Crypto and more!
To mark our first year of running these events in Belfast, we have a bumper multiple speaker event! This time we're very pleased to welcome Keith Maxwell presenting "A Literal Program" and Russell Matbouli presenting "A Method for Obtaining Digital Signatures and Public Key Cryptosystems". We'll also have a short presentation from Paddy Carey reporting back from his time at PWLConf in St. Louis!
A Literal Program
Last month‘s column introduced Don Knuth’s style of “Literate Programming” and his WEB system for building programs that are works of literature. This column presents a literate program by Knuth (its origins are sketched in last month‘s column) and, as befits literature, a review. So without further ado, here is Knuth’s program, retypeset in Communications style.
A Method for Obtaining Dig…
PWL Book Club #2 - "Category Theory For Programmers"
Papers We Love Belfast's new and experimental book club has selected Milewski's Category Theory for Programmers as our first book. The aim is to hold a monthly book club for programmers to get together and discuss a "must-read" CS text.
Trello board to vote for upcoming books.
On November 11th we'll be discussing part two and a few chapters of part three of the book, up to and including Chapter 3, "Free and Forgetful Adjunctions". It is not required to read the book before attending the group, but probably recommended to get the most out of the discussion.
For some time now I’ve been floating the idea of writing a book about category theory that would be targeted at programmers. Mind you, not computer scientists but programmers — engineers rather than scientists. I know this sound…
PWL Book Club #1 - "Category Theory For Programmers"
Papers We Love Belfast's new and experimental book club has selected Milewski's Category Theory for Programmers as our first book. The aim is to hold a monthly book club for programmers to get together and discuss a "must-read" CS text.
Trello board to vote for upcoming books.
On October 21st we'll be discussing part one of the book, up to and including Chapter 10, "Natural Transformations". It is not required to read the book before attending the group, but probably recommended to get the most out of the discussion.
For some time now I’ve been floating the idea of writing a book about category theory that would be targeted at programmers. Mind you, not computer scientists but programmers — engineers rather than scientists. I know this sounds crazy and I am properly scared. I can’…
PWL Belfast #4 - "Idle Time Garbage Collection Scheduling"
Papers We Love Belfast is pleased to announce our fourth event, sponsored by Flax & Teal! This time, we're delighted to welcome Michael Jason Smith presenting a Research at Google paper, <a>Idle Time Garbage Collection Scheduling</a>!
Abstract
Efficient garbage collection is increasingly important in today’s managed language runtime systems that demand low latency, low memory consumption, and high throughput. Garbage collection may pause the application for many milliseconds to identify live memory, free unused memory, and compact fragmented regions of memory, even when employing concurrent garbage collection. In animation-based applications that require 60 frames per second, these pause times may be observable, degrading user experience. This paper introduces idle time garbage collection scheduling to increase the responsiveness of applications by hiding expensive garbage collection operations inside of small, otherwise unused idle portions of t…
PWL Belfast #3 - "20 May 1910: LF Richardson and the Dawn of Simulation"
Happy New Year, paper fans! For our first PWL Belfast event of 2017 sponsored by HighWire Press, we're very happy to have Phil Weir presenting a talk titled 20 May 1910: LF Richardson and the Dawn of Simulation.
Summary
Accurate weather forecasts based on computer simulation are now produced as a routine, and have reached such a level of reliability that the rare forecast failures evoke a strong reaction in the media and amongst users. Numerical simulation of an ever-increasing range of geophysical phenomena is adding enormously to our understanding of complex processes in the Earth system. The consequences for mankind of ongoing climate change will be far-reaching. Earth System Models are capable of replicating climate regimes of past millennia and are the best means we have of predicting the future of our climate.
Details
Doors open at 6.30 pm and the presentation will begin at 7…
Papers We Love Belfast #2 - "Reflections on Trusting Trust"
For our second Papers We Love Belfast event we're very pleased to have Chris Nixon presenting "Reflections on Trusting Trust"!
Details
Doors open at 6.30 pm and the presentation will begin at 7 pm. There will (hopefully!) be food and refreshments (including vegetarian and vegan options, please let us know if you have any other dietary requirements).
After Chris presents the paper, we will open up the floor to discussion and questions. We hope that you'll read the paper before the meetup, but don't stress if you can't. If you have any questions, thoughts, or related information, feel free to get in touch on twitter, or add to the discussion on this event's thread.
Never read a paper before? Try this or
Papers We Love - Raft
For our very first Papers We Love Belfast we're delighted to have Paddy Carey presenting Raft, a distributed consensus algorithm!
Abstract
Raft is a consensus algorithm for managing a replicated log. It produces a result equivalent to (multi-)Paxos, and it is as efficient as Paxos, but its structure is different from Paxos; this makes Raft more understandable than Paxos and also provides a better foundation for building practical systems. In order to enhance understandability, Raft separates the key elements of consensus, such as leader election, log replication, and safety, and it enforces a stronger degree of coherency to reduce the number of states that must be considered. Results from a user study demonstrate that Raft is easier for students to learn than Paxos. Raft also includes a new mechanism for changing the cluster membership, which uses overlapping majorities to guarantee safety.
Details
Doors open …
