A non-hierarchical approach to object-oriented programming

The Lisp historical archive web site just got reorganized. I have made a quick check of the contents, and found out that Howard I. Cannon's original technical report about Flavors - A non-hierarchical approach to object-oriented programming was finally made available as part of that archive. The report was originally written in 1979, was circulated around Lispers, but was never ever published as an actual technical report, although it is cited as such in several later papers by other authors. It describes the original object-oriented extension to the MIT Lisp Machine, heavily influenced by Smalltalk, but with multiple inheritance and method combinations added (but no multiple dispatch yet, which got only introduced in CommonLoops, a direct predecessor of CLOS). Although unpublished and clearly in an unfinished state, this report itself influenced a lot of other subsequent experiments with object-oriented extensions to Lisp dialects. Among other things, it already mentions the idea of exploring "meta-protocols" for making parts of the implementation of the object-oriented extension itself customizable, which was later investigated in much more detail as part of the work on the CLOS MOP (see also The Art of the Metaobject Protocol). And, of course, method combinations were already a very early predecessor of aspect-oriented programming.

It's good that this very important historical document is finally available!

Now is the time...

Now is the time to switch programming languages: Oracle is the borg.

AOSD'11 conference

Another interesting conference is coming up: The International Conference on Aspect-Oriented Software Development will be held in Porto de Galinhas, Brazil in March 2011. The conference chair is Shigeru Chiba, who is a long-term contributor to reflection and metaprogramming techniques himself, and who has assembled a diverse program committee covering not only core aspect technologies (like AspectJ-influenced approaches), but also explicitly Feature-oriented Programming, Context-oriented Programming, and also metaprogramming and reflection (which have been somewhat neglected in the aspect community for a long time, although they are clearly very relevant), among others. Dynamic languages are also mentioned in the call for research papers, so good papers based on languages like Lisp, Scheme, Smalltalk, and so on, are definitely welcome.

Another interesting element of this conference that I haven't seen before is that there will be two opportunities to submit papers: The first deadline is July 1, 2010, and the second deadline is October 1, 2010. The idea is that papers that fail to get accepted in the first round can be improved by their authors for a second round of reviews. It will be interesting to see if this works out.

International Lisp Conference '10

The International Lisp Conference (ILC'10) is being held again, sooner than expected: It will be held in October 2010 in Reno, Nevada. This year, the conference will be co-located with OOPSLA/SPLASH, which also hosts the Dynamic Language Symposium. So this event is bound to be a very interesting combination. Paper submission for ILC'10 is open, submission deadline is August 1, so there is enough time to submit something. See the call for papers for more information.

Lisp Machine demonstration...

I only now realized that besides the interesting talks and presentations to be given at this year's European Lisp Symposium, there will also be a demonstration of a TI Explorer Lisp Machine. That's pretty cool - I have never seen a Lisp Machine in action, but always wanted to see one, so this will be my first time. Looking forward to that. :)

Ah, yes, here is the link again: European Lisp Symposium, Lisbon, Portugal, May 6-7, 2010.

There will also be presentations by Kent Pitman and Matthias Felleisen whose abstracts sound pretty interesting, and I will try to give an overview of parallel programming in Common Lisp at the symposium as well. Still have to work on the slides for that one...

3rd European Lisp Symposium is very soon!

The third European Lisp Symposium is less than a month away. I have received the following call for participation to redistribute, which I post here for everyone to read.

3rd European Lisp Symposium

May 6-7, 2010, Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal

Call for Participation

Registration for the 3rd European Lisp Symposium (ELS 2010) is now open.

Scope and Programme Highlights

The purpose of the European Lisp Symposium is to provide a forum for the discussion of all aspects of the design, implementation and application of any of the Lisp dialects. We encourage everyone interested in Lisp to participate.

As well as presentations of the accepted technical papers and tutorials, the programme features the following highlights:

• Kent Pitman of HyperMeta Inc. will offer reflections on Lisp Past, Present and Future;
  
• Pascal Costanza will lead a tutorial session on Parallel Programming in Common Lisp;
  
• Matthias Felleisen of PLT will talk about languages for creating;
  
• programming languages;
  
• there will be opportunities for attendees to give lightning talks and demos of late-breaking work.
  

Social events

• Symposium banquet (included with registration)
  
• Excursion to Sintra (optional), for six centuries the favourite
  
• Summer residence of the Kings of Portugal, who were attracted by cool climates and the beauty of the town's setting.
  

Programme Chair

Christophe Rhodes, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Local Chair

Antonio Leitao, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal

Programme Committee

• Marco Antoniotti, Universita Milano Bicocca, Italy
  
• Giuseppe Attardi, Universita di Pisa, Italy
  
• Pascal Costanza, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
  
• Irene Anne Durand, Universite Bordeaux I, France
  
• Marc Feeley, Universite de Montreal, Canada
  
• Ron Garret, Amalgamated Widgets Unlimited, USA
  
• Gregor Kiczales, University of British Columbia, Canada
  
• Antonio Leitao, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal
  
• Nick Levine, Ravenbrook Ltd, UK
  
• Scott McKay, ITA Software, Inc., USA
  
• Peter Norvig, Google Inc., USA
  
• Kent Pitman, PTC, USA
  
• Christian Queinnec, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, France
  
• Robert Strandh, Universite Bordeaux I, France
  
• Didier Verna, EPITA Research and Development Laboratory, France
  
• Barry Wilkes, Citi, UK
  
• Taiichi Yuasa, Kyoto University, Japan
  

Registration

Registration is open and costs EUR120 (EUR60 for students) until 22nd April, and EUR200 (EUR120 for students) afterwards.

Registration includes a copy of the proceedings, coffee breaks, and the symposium banquet. Accommodation is not included.