I Have Nothing to Declare But My Genius

I Have Nothing to Declare but My Genius

With mainstream language design mired in ennui and retreating into formalism, the field has been effectively ceded to a ragtag, de-facto coalition of old-school dynamic stalwarts, scripting language designers, and ad-hoc domain specific API architects. A generation of research in this area can be distilled down into three overarching ideas, the rest is filigree.

This talk will explore these ideas, examine how and why these currents are converging, and show why the large scale, dispersed, heterogeneous, polyglot world of 21st century computing demands nothing less than this degree of commitment to dynamism.

Brian Foote has been programming professionally since the dawn of the Carter Administration, mostly in the service of academic researchers of various stripes. His association with the academy has enabled him to dabble extensively in research. His interests include objects, programming, programming language design, reflection, metalevel architecture, patterns, and software devolution. His exposure to Smalltalk during his impressionable formative years indelibly shaped his attitudes towards software architecture and design. Brian is one of five people to have attended every OOPSLA conference to-date. He is the author of a forthcoming self-help volume entitled “Late Binding as a Philosophy of Life”.