When
11:00 AM Saturday
Where
Town Square A
Silicon Valley Code Camp : October 19 & 20, 2019session

You Can Count on Numbers

This is an informal history of numbers, from bundled sticks near the Nile to the supercomputer in your pocket. The machines know only numbers, and the way they think about numbers influences the design of our programming languages, which influences the way we think about numbers.

About This Session

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.

Time: 11:00 AM Saturday    Room: Town Square A 

The Speaker(s)

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Douglas Crockford

Discoverer , Virgule-Solidus

Douglas Crockford discovered the JSON Data Interchange Format. He is also the author of _JavaScript: The Good Parts_. He has been called a guru, but he is actually more of a mahatma.