My name is Gabriel Garcia. I very recently completed a 5-year Software Engineering degree at UPSA in Bolivia and am currently employed by Eventbrite in Mendoza, Argentina. I have a huge crush on programming language design and implementation since before starting university, and I hope someday soon to back up that passion with formal studies. This is why I decided to attend Curry On back in 2016 and again this year. Living so far away from these type of conferences, I find it amazingly surreal to finally see and meet the people I’ve only seen on video lectures countless times. (Yes, I can be a fanboy at times.)

The studies and experience I’ve gathered so far are almost uniquely focused on engineering. Still, I strongly believe that it is an engineer’s responsibility to be well-informed of prior and current developments in academia. It is not (exactly) our job to discover, after all! Or even worse, to “discover.” (Most readers will understand this.) So, I make it a case for myself to read publications on programming languages, concurrency, and distributed systems – my favorite topics in computer science. Not only that, but I also tend to be that work colleague that is always trying to teach or explain what they’re passionate about. I think the combination of these two behaviors makes me a decent engineer and a (relatively) interesting colleague to have around (:

This year, I will also be a student volunteer at the conference for the whole week. I hope to get to know and interact with interesting people around the globe with whom I share my passions. I’m also looking forward to having a better understanding of what it is like to pursue undergrad/grad studies in computer science.