Guest: Ted Neward

Host: Daniel Steinberg

Anyone who develops software for a living, or who works for an
organization that does, knows the challenge of keeping up with
changes in technology. Tools change. Methodologies change.
Frameworks change. Languages change. For us, change is a
central fact of life.

Even when a software developer is not being driven by change,
she faces a daunting task. The world of computer science is
big, as is the world of software development. No matter how
much we know, there is more to know. So you've
mastered OOP -- what about functional programming or logic
programming? You are a Java or Smalltalk guru, but what about
Scheme or Erlang?

The more tools we have in our toolbox, the better prepared we
are for our next task. The more kinds of
things we know, the better we can use use the tools in our
toolbox.

Ted Neward is a software developer facing these challenges
head-on. He has been aggressively learning several new
languages of late, expanding his repertoire. Later this
month, he'll be at ooPSLA, too.

Anyone who has ever attended ooPSLA
knows that it is the best conference around for adding tools
to your toolbox and new ideas to your thinking. This year
is no exception.

Neward himself is contributing to the mix od new ideas at
ooPSLA with two tutorials: one with
Erik Meijer on

LINQ,
and one with Martin Odersky and Gilles Dubochet on

Scala.
Each of these tutorials teaches new tools, as well as new ways
of thinking.

Listen to this podcast to hear Daniel Steinberg of DimSum Thinking
talk with Neward about aggressively learning new ideas, about
adding tools to your tool box, and about why he likes Scala so
much.