Strange Loop

How Plato and Aristotle invented modern programming

The philosopher A. N. Whitehead once quipped that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. So is all of computer science. This lively talk explores the philosophical systems devised by Plato and Aristotle, showing how Plato laid the foundations for what is now Object Oriented Programming, while Aristotle's dynamic model is at the core of functional programming. It is only now, 2500 years later, that we can clearly see the practical implications of their respective metaphysical systems. What lessons can we learn by revisiting the roots of Western philosophy?

Matt Butcher

Hewlett-Packard

Matt is a Developer Experience Engineer at HP Cloud. He is the author of seven technology books and numerous articles on topics including Java, JavaScript, and PHP development as well as LDAP. An advocate of Open Source, he maintains or contributes to numerous projects. And, yes, he's a real, live philosopher, too. He is a PhD candidate at Loyola University Chicago, where he specializes in Theory of Knowledge (Epistemology).