Some time ago I've decided to reduce my speaking engagements. In the future I will only speak at a few conferences - conferences which are definitely worth attending. One of these conferences is the Parallel. I was lucky enough to get a speaking slot with a topic that I thought is both: fitting and problematic. However, there was some interest in JavaScript and the organizers have definitely been courages to put this talk on the agenda.
One of the reasons why they accepted a talk on Parallel.js is that another JavaScript talk has been accepted as well: A talk from Golo Roden about concurrency patterns in JavaScript (callbacks to promises to anything fancy that builds on top of that). This way the agenda had a nice little cascade, starting with Golo and ending with my talk.
All in all the Parallel has been on the same level as last year. I much appreciate that they invited Ulrich Drepper to give two talks. The keynote alone was quite worth it. I guess the most important things one needs to know before starting any parallel programming or HPC has been covered. Besides common knowledge such as Amdahl's law and frequency scaling the talk contained information on virtualization, novel hardware features, and task-based programming. It went from high- to low-level and back again.
The program was as mixed and informative as in the previous year. From Java to .NET, from functional programming languages like Scala to Go. Again, some members of the C++ committee participated as speakers providing useful information on the standardization process and current events. It also opened the door for interesting disussions and the exchange of ideas.
The only thing I missed was the Flammkuchenmobil. This year the conference was held in Heidelberg, which obviously isn't famous for its delicious Flammkuchen or offers any kind of Flammkuchenmobil. Too bad!