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A programming language nut takes a look at the JAOO Aarhus 2008 programme
By Erik Corry | July 29, 2008
JAOO 2008 draws inexorably nearer and the programme is being fleshed out. I guess I’m a programming language nut, because all the things that look most interesting to me are related pretty closely to programming. As usual the programme is shaping up to be unmissable.
There are still some blank spots on the web page though and some things where you wonder what it’s all about. Glenn Vanderburg is going to talk about End User Programming, but there’s no abstract. My first thought was that he would talk about the sort of programming that end users can do, but that can’t be right: Everyone knows end users can’t program so it must be about something else. My new theory is that it is about programming the end user. Perhaps we can learn to program them not to do things that trigger bugs in our software.
Also in the Programming Languages track there’s Jeffrey Snover who is going to talk about PowerShell. No abstract there either, but I’ve heard of this one. It seems Microsoft have been quietly innovating in a forgotton corner of the programming language house: Languages that can also be used as shells. I think there’s room for improvement there. Can GNU’s Bourne Again Shell really be the end of the line for shell innovation? In programming language terms it’s a living fossil – a crocodile. Bash just sat there in the swamp while meteorites wiped out Cobol, Fortran and Forth. It skulked on PDP11s while functional and object-oriented languages conquered the earth. And now along comes Jeffrey with a hot-blooded griffin of a language. Spooky. When is the Linux version due Jeffrey? Just kidding!
Over on the Ruby track apparently they are going to be railing. According to answers.com they define that as “Harsh, often insulting language”. While it’s true that the Ruby guys can be a little rough around the edges that seems a bit much.
No abstract either on Dan Ingalls’ talk about Lively. Now there’s a crazy project. It’s got that air of Smalltalk about it, the whole development-environment-mixed-up-with-application thing which Smalltalkers will tell you is the most productive thing since Henry Ford said, “Hey, why don’t we build a load of little black cars and make them all exactly the same as each other to save hassle.” It even looks a bit like Squeak. But it’s all based on JavaScript and it runs in Safari. So it’s totally a part of the modern cloud based web connected mashup 2.0 social networking thing. Or something.
Apparently Dan Ingalls hangs out with Allen Wirfs-Brock who “is currently working on some very interesting language enhancements that he can’t talk about publicly”. Let’s get him back to JAOO too and get them both drunk and find out what that’s all about. Hello? (at this point I kicked the program chair over the shin to get her attention.)
