Home

LtU turns six!

Another year gone! What a year it has been: so many new ideas, members and occasional guests it will take a year to mention them all.

This year LtU traffic grew in an unprecedented way, and at some points along the way it seemed like we may be losing our collective identity. The LtU community was never a formal organization, of course: You are a member if you consider yourself one and contribute to the community in whatever way you find appropriate. Too many people stopping by to ask one question and leaving soon after can hurt the community. I am glad to say that the LtU community proved strong enough to handle the surge in new users, and indeed managed to persuade many of the newcomers to stay as regular members. Several prominent researchers in the field began posting here occasionally, without having to be invited. It is an honour having them among us, and I will of course try to get them to guest blog when I get the chance. It is quite fun to see that most interesting questions raised about new papers are answered by the authors or their graduate students.

The cordial nature of the LtU community, even if sometimes obscured by rants and bickering, managed to prevail and keep LtU a nice place to visit even as traffic increased and the number of new members signing up daily became astonishing.

From day one I saw LtU as a community. As such it is incredibly important to me that LtU is not just informative and has members with diverse backgrounds and skills, but is also friendly and helpful. I will not mention the specific members who always go out of their way to help when others raise questions or ask for assistance. We all know who you are. In my mind you are the gold members of the LtU community.

A new Lambda-year is about to begin, and it's great to feel certain that next year is going to be as instructive and challenging as the year just ending.

Onward and upward!

By Ehud Lamm at 2006-07-27 22:51 | Admin | other blogs | 11748 reads

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Now We are Six

When I was One,
I had just begun.
When I was Two,
I was nearly new.
When I was Three
I was hardly me.
When I was Four,
I was not much more.
When I was Five, I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

-- A. A. Milne, 1927

By Peter McArthur at Fri, 2006-07-28 00:18 | login or register to post comments

congrats!

I've been visiting LtU for a little over a year. Almost every time I visit, I realize how little of Computer Science I actually learned during my undergrad days. Thanks for a great resource.

By shahbaz at Fri, 2006-07-28 20:29 | login or register to post comments

Second

falcon: Almost every time I visit, I realize how little of Computer Science I actually learned during my undergrad days.

Boy, amen to that. Were it not for LtU and one private mailing list I'm on, I would likely not have learned about TAPL, the Curry-Howard Correspondence, Coq, Haskell, etc. (Amazingly, I learned about O'Caml somewhere else.)

It seems somehow fitting to me that, at LtU's sixth anniversary, we're seeing an incredibly fruitful dialog among members of both the dynamic and static typing communities who, given a specific implementation challenge, are rising to the occasion. I hope that the other participants in that dialog are learning as much as I am, and having as much fun as I am.

Happy Birthday, LtU!

By Paul Snively at Fri, 2006-07-28 20:34 | login or register to post comments

All the best!

Almost every time I visit, I realize how little of Computer Science I actually learned during my undergrad days.

May I add another word of praise to LtU on the same lines. I never did computer science at university. I studied engineering. So everything I have learned about computing has been on-the-the-job and from free resources.

There are plenty of resources on the web to help you do a particular job in a mainstream language, e.g. C, C++ or Java. The articles and discussions in LtU are generally much more theoretical, but they point to the future of computing.

So here is to a happy (hopefully functional) future!

By GlynAdgie at Sat, 2006-07-29 19:06 | login or register to post comments

Thanks guys, it's great to

Thanks guys, it's great to hear.

By Ehud Lamm at Sun, 2006-07-30 13:20 | login or register to post comments