

The C Conference - zdw
http://cconf.github.com/

======
memset
One technology development which makes this increasingly relevant are the
prevalence of Arduino (Raspberry Pi, etc) - embedded platforms that take care
of a lot of the hardware heavy lifting for you.

But there is a gap between what the Arduino libraries let you do and the
capabilities of the hardware itself. And it is for these things, projects of
increasing sophistication, which require some C and assembly, for which there
is value in wider dissemination of expertise.

Incidentally, I (a few months ago) created an "NYC C and Assembly Enthusiasts"
meetup group, which seems to be in a similar vein. I have not yet hosted any
meetups, but since C Conference Enthusiasts seem to be on this thread, please
send me a note!

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saurik
You should not use the signature design of someone else's book if you have no
affiliation with them: come up with your own branding.

~~~
tptacek
Meh. I thought it was clever. K&R is a little like the bible; nobody's going
to think this guy was involved with it.

~~~
saurik
_sigh_ I did... :( Now, thanks to the over-the-top "nobody's going to think
that" comment, we get to have an argument over whether I'm stupid instead of
looking at similar situations (such as the many people who do that to my
brand, and the real confusion I can demonstrate among both my user base and
the people I network with, many of whom are not so technical as you, I, or
even my users), the problems with accepting that specific excuse at face value
(as I have found it equally used by people running real money-related scams in
addition to people with good intentions), the potential for damage to the
brand for the people we admire who built it (Kernighan is still alive, and it
seems pretty evident that he is paying homage to this with the cover of his
new book, D is for Digital), or any of the interesting moral questions behind
the sentiment (for a humorous example of where this can go, see the episode
"I'm Not That Guy" of How I Met Your Mother).

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tptacek
Uh, what? I don't think you're stupid.

~~~
saurik
I am not certain how to reconcile this comment of yours with your earlier flat
dismissal.

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derleth
'Stupid' and 'ignorant' or 'naïve' are not the same thing.

~~~
tptacek
Uh... what? I don't think he's ignorant or naive. Jiminy. You can disagree
with an idea casually around here, right?

~~~
angersock
no we are very serious business

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silentbicycle
Embedded development is another important niche for C. (There are already many
embedded conferences, of course.)

A track on testing C projects would be good. For example, check out Unity
(<http://throwtheswitch.org/white-papers/unity-intro.html>), CMock
(<http://throwtheswitch.org/white-papers/cmock-intro.html>), and greatest
(<https://github.com/silentbicycle/greatest>). (disclosure: I'm involved with
all three.)

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alain94040
Pick a date and a location. Contact the venue and make a tentative booking.
Then, only then, spread the word publicly. Right now, no one can help because
no date or format is set.

Here's a tip: use cvent.com to post a RFP (request for proposal). It's a great
way to contat tens of venues/hotels with only a few clicks, and never have to
talk to anyone on the phone to get pricing for various locations, rooms and
sizes. A geek's paradise :-)

Or you can do like I did for the Startup Conference: start small (the first
conference was officially half a day but I crammed 6 hours of content, crazy).
See that people loved it, and grow from there. You'll learn as you go.

~~~
mvzink
I think your suggestions are really useful, but on the other hand, I think for
something as broad as C, an initial test with a measuring stick is required
before figuring out the specifics. I mean, with C, you could go in such
diverse directions as microcontroller programming all the way to desktop
application development. It may be better to figure out how to reconcile C's
broad applicability before booking a venue.

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cperciva
So far this seems more like "the vague idea that a C conference might occur
somewhere at some point if someone wants to pay for it and someone wants to
organize it" than "The C Conference".

Can we have more action and less wishful thinking?

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philips
Woah, this hit Hacker News and Twitter before I expected. I started contacting
people today to start organizing this and created the site to have a point of
discussion. If you want to discuss ideas, sponsorship or venue stuff email me
directly or post to the Google Group.

If you want to discuss in person stop by 231 27th St. SF, CA.

cconf@googlegroups.com brandon.cconf@ifup.org

~~~
cperciva
Discussion is good, but it needs to start somewhere. All you've got -- or at
least, all you've published -- is a vague list of ideas, most of which would
_individually_ make a big conference.

A conference is defined as much by what it _isn't_ as by what it _is_. Start
by narrowing your scope a bit; a conference which is about everything relating
to the single most widely used language in the history of computer programming
isn't even remotely feasible.

~~~
jfarmer
Chill, man. It's clear he posted this as a "Here's a good idea, let's start to
flesh it out" sort of page, and it got exposure before it had even been
fleshed out. I'm sure he's looking for people who are really excited about
making it happen to help him do just that. I think this is a fine way to go
about it.

Two weeks from now nobody will remember that this took off on GitHub, HN,
Twitter, etc.

If you like the idea, or even just the potential of the idea, why don't you
offer up useful suggestions instead of being uselessly critical? What would
you want to see? Since it needs more focus, where would you focus it? If you
were giving a talk, what would you give? Do you know anyone who would be
excited about helping to organize it?

If I were Brandon, I'd be ecstatic that this took root so quickly and people
are already responding emotionally -- even if negatively.

~~~
cperciva
_why don't you offer up useful suggestions instead of being uselessly
critical?_

I thought "you need to narrow your scope" was a useful suggestion. I guess you
think differently.

~~~
zedshaw
No, a suggestion would be:

"You need to narrow your scope. I personally would be more interested in X and
Y, but not Z, J, or N."

What you did was give a vague criticism without offering a concrete solution
in response. Those kinds of criticisms are always difficult to respond to
primarily because, should he follow your suggestion and it fail, you can
simply say:

"Well I just said narrow your scope, I never said narrow it to those failed
topics."

~~~
cperciva
I'm not so egotistical as to think that the topics which interest me would be
the ones which interest lots of other people. In fact, I have ample evidence
to the contrary.

~~~
jfarmer
Nobody is saying that's the case, but surely you see the (qualitative)
difference between:

"Why did you even do this? It's really unfocused. This needs to be more
focused if you ever hope in seeing something happen. We need to see more
action and less wishful thinking."

and

"Interesting! This has a lot of potential. I'd love to see topics X, Y, and Z,
although that's just me. Send me an email and I can introduce you to some
people who might be interested in helping to organize this."

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hsmyers
Didn't know about CCAN <http://ccodearchive.net/> I plan on investigating. Am
home bound so attending the conference is not possible as much as I would like
to. Am hoping for videos and similar post conference so I can get what I can
:)

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dhconnelly
I would absolutely pay for and go to this. Such amazing potential for keynote
speakers.

~~~
BrianLy
Do people really go to programming conferences for keynotes? My experience has
been that the hallway conversations are alone worth more than keynotes.

Many keynotes sessions tend to be disappointing because there is not enough
time to dive into technical details, or the presenter is not sure if they
should be focusing on the movement as opposed to their technical
contributions.

~~~
cperciva
I go to conferences I've attended before because of the hallway track. But
that won't get me to attend a _new_ conference, because I don't know if the
hallway track will be any good yet.

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pjmlp
It might turn out to be interesting. So far I was only aware of such
conferences by ACCU.

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pavlov
Every time I use Grand Central Dispatch on Mac OS X, I get the feeling that
"C99 + Blocks" is actually a pretty great language for many things, and I'd
love to use it on other platforms.

One of these days, I need to look into the state of Clang on Windows...

If you haven't used blocks, Wikipedia has a concise article with a readable
code sample, although it doesn't really give a very good idea of what real
closures in C are good for:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocks_(C_language_extension)>

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leon_
uh, looks like some webdev hippster read the 2nd ed. and now wants to start a
C-rockstar/ninja cult.

~~~
yxhuvud
Would that be a bad thing?

