“Listen to Your Old Man”
Western Users of SAS Software is thrilled to announce Rick Langston as the keynote speaker for the 2025 WUSS Conference and Educational Forum!
Rick will entertain and educate us with a reflective, humorous look at the evolution of computing. Now 70, Rick brings insight from a career that began with punch cards in 1974 to today’s world of AI-assisted programming. He promises to guide us through the remarkable changes he’s witnessed—with stories, perspective, and a few laughs along the way.
Speaker Bio:
Rick Langston is a name well known and deeply respected in the SAS community. His journey with SAS began in 1977 at UNC-Chapel Hill, working on a biostatistics project in collaboration with the CDC. Recognized early as a local SAS expert, he presented at the first SUGI conferences in 1979 and 1980 and joined SAS Institute officially in 1980.
Over his 38-year career, Rick made lasting contributions across SAS System versions—from Version 79.6 through Version 9.4m6. He played a key role in major rewrites and enhancements across Versions 5 through 9, and was the original developer and long-time maintainer of foundational procedures such as PROC FORMAT and PROC PRINT. Rick also created SAS/TOOLKIT, enabling users to write their own procedures, and later managed the Core Systems group, overseeing many core functionalities of the SAS System.
In addition to his technical achievements, Rick was a frequent presenter and keynote speaker at user group events—locally, nationally, and internationally. He has delivered four WUSS keynotes over the years, always at the request of the conference committee.
Although retired since 2018, Rick remains an active SAS user and has also embraced Python. He continues to contribute to the SAS community and has submitted a paper for WUSS 2025 on VARCHARs in the DATA step.