Call for Proposals

As a club, we're interested in exploring all areas of computation and are currently reading Types and Programming Languages. Alongside regular meetings about the book, we hold regular "interstitial" meetings about other topics.

To propose new topics for an interstitial meeting, feel free to leave your suggestion below.

Proposals

• What Even Is A React (And So Can You!)

  • Tom S: React is conceptually simple but surprisingly difficult to understand from the outside. In this extremely hands-on workshop we’ll instead learn about React… from the INSIDE. I have written tests that explain the important bits of the React API; you will make each test pass by writing JavaScript. Eventually you’ll have your own toy version of React that does the main stuff that real React does, just without all the clever gubbins.

• Machines Making Machines

  • Chris P: I'm exploring whether it's possible to build a machine (A) that can build other machines (B) from a specification. For example, to build an "addition" machine, you'd give (A) some examples, e.g. 1+1=2, 3+4=7 and its task is to construct a machine (B) with finitely many states/rules that produce those outputs, given those inputs. To accomplish this, I'm using the Cook–Levin theorem (which we spoke about in the NP-Completeness meeting) and producing a SAT problem that simulates multiple Turing Machine computations. If I ever get this working (or even if I don't) it might be interesting to talk about in a meeting.