Lightweight Languages Workshop, Cambridge MA 11/17/01

[Mike Salib]

Folks,
We're going to be holding a workshop on Saturday, November 17 in 
Cambridge, MA. We being the dynamic languages group at the MIT AI lab. 
Consider yourselves invited. It should be lots of fun; Jeremy Hylton 
will be speaking as well as lots of other cool folks (Dan Sugalski of 
perl6 fame, ESR of, well, ESR fame, etc). Here's the info. If this 
appeals to you, check out our web site at LL1.mit.edu.

LL1 is a workshop where the world's most innovative language 
implementors from industry and most clever language researchers from 
academia are coming together to jam for a day. Implementors and 
researchers will give short presentations followed by lively 
discussions. Everyone is welcome to attend; the workshop is free, but if 
you're going to come, you have to register with us first. If you can't 
make it to sunny Cambridge, Massachusetts for the day, you can still 
watch on our live webcast. This workshop is hosted by the Dynamic 
Languages group at the MIT AI Lab.

Many of the most widely used languages to emerge in the last five years 
have come, not from the academic programming language research 
community, but from industry.  Examples include Perl, Python, Ruby, and 
Rebol.  These languages have borrowed heavily from academic research, 
sporting features such as garbage collection and closures, but they also 
experiment with many novel ideas, such as first class environments and 
keyword-free syntax.  In the meantime, academic research has made 
substantial progress in formally addressing issues such as safety, 
correctness, and also the implementation of seemingly expensive features 
such as closures and dynamic dispatch.  Lightweight languages have 
proven to be the most effective vector for getting innovative language 
features into the hands of working programmers.

We use the term "lightweight languages" to describe some of the common 
features of these new languages.  The term "lightweight" refers not to 
actual functionality, but to the idea that these languages are easy to 
acquire, learn, and use.  Examples that would fall into this category 
include Perl, Python, Ruby, Scheme (and scsh), and Curl.

The one day workshop on lightweight languages aims to bring together 
implementors from the lightweight language community and researchers 
from academia.  The hope is that both communities will find it both 
enjoyable and enlightening to hear what others are up to.  People 
involved with implementing the next generation of scripting languages 
might find design and implementation ideas from academia, and 
programming language researchers can hear about the challenges and 
successes involved with producing and maintaining popular lightweight 
languages.

The workshop will consist of both prepared presentations and also lively 
discussions.  Participants are invited to give short presentations of 
their work, including their goals, aesthetics, and issues.

Participants will influence what topics we focus on.  Some example 
topics are: interoperability, RMI, macros, closures, types (static vs. 
dynamic), executable invariants and assertions, and dynamic 
optimization.  Let us know your preferences.

Best Regards,
Mike Salib

(remove the redundant bits in my email address to send mail, or better 
yet, just visit the website)