This was my first ECOOP/ISSTA/Curry On, and I really enjoyed the experience! The summer school was fun, I especially liked Anders’ introductory talk on static analysis and also Amal’s talk on compiler verification. I also particularly enjoyed the Types, Runtime Systems, and Formal Calculi sessions, and loved Michael’s ISSTA keynote. I don’t run in to function programming often in my day-to-day, and didn’t know too much about Simon Peyton Jones, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m now a fan!

As for the location, Amsterdam was great, I think that city is awesome! And the Netherlands seemed like a sweet place. I’m already looking forward to a return trip. I’m looking all around town here in Waterloo for some stroopwafels…

Coming back to Canada, I noticed some differences between here and the Netherlands. For one, everything’s bigger in Canada. The cars, the portions, the space, you just feel like there’s more. I feel like the Mövenpick was quite big, but certainly very classy, and wonder if only expensive hotels in Europe are large. In Canada, perfectly average hotels are likely to be huge, and have enough room to accommodate at least a small conference. Also, public transit here is awful compared to Europe (and even then, I hear that European transit is bad compared with certain other countries). I really wish I could just hop on a train at the airport and head home, but I needed to make several connections.

There are a few things that I’m looking forward to for the next conference I attend. First, I’m excited to not have a lot of other work to do (at SPLASH ‘17 I was worried about finding a PhD advisor, and here I was worried about finishing my thesis…). Also, I feel like I understood more of the talks this time around, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to follow even more next time. I saw several familiar faces at ECOOP, ranging from people I met at a summer school or at SPLASH, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again at the next conference!