Stable Schemas, Mutable Software
When you save a document, you should be able to open and edit your documents with any compatible program. Past versions. Future versions. Software written in house, and software written by strangers on the other side of the world.
How do we make our programs do that?
In this talk, I'll lay out the challenge in front of us. How do we make a file format which can grow and change over time, without coordination between developers? How do we make programs today which can open files that won't be created for 10 or 100 years, sporting features that haven't been invented yet? It sounds impossible. Yet Email and HTML have quietly managed it for decades.
I think we can solve this problem. Let's get the creative juices flowing.
[pending] Seph please enter your talk details here when ready
Seph is an independent research engineer at large. He's been working on distributed, realtime collaborative technology for 15 years - all the way back to Google Wave. Recently he developed and published Eg-Walker - which is a new, efficient approach to writing CRDTs.
Seph is also an improviser, performer and part-time filmmaker.