Iterate has traditionally sponsored the conferences JavaZone and Smidig. This year we have decided to support flatMap(Oslo), the conference about Scala and functional programming on the JVM.

We believe that alternative JVM languages have the potential to enable higher productivity and better software. Especially functional programming (FP) is very promissing, with its focus on better reusability via higher-order functions and on concurrency via referentially transparent functions and immutability.

Many companies can benefit from the powerful mixture of new and time-proven features that these modern languages offer but they are often discouraged by their (relative) novelty, lack of knowledge and experience, and fear of unavailability of capable professionals. Therefore we want to contribute to spreading information, exchanging experience, and attracting more developers to these languages to enable the IT market to step forward and grab the benefits of FP.