Boston Lisp Meeting: Monday 2009-07-27 Bruce Lewis, Richard Kreuter http://fare.livejournal.com/145087.html A Boston Lisp Meeting will take place on Monday, July 27th 2009 at 1800 at MIT 34-401B, where Bruce Lewis will speak about OurDoings, and Richard Kreuter will speak about defsystems and deliverables, or, unary REQUIRE for the win! Additionally, we are still accepting proposals for up to two volunteers to each give of a 5-minute Lightning Talk (followed by 2-minute Q&A). Also, there will be a buffet offered by ITA Software. Registration is not necessary but appreciated. See details below. * Bruce Lewis will speak about OurDoings < http://OurDoings.com/ >, a web site that solves the problem faced by people who take a lot of pictures, but don't have much time to share them online. Its approach to the problem is straightforward, but unique. In this talk, Bruce will use the OurDoings web site as context in which to explain how macros enable a kind of abstraction that functions do not, and how this form of abstraction is useful in common problems that thousands of programmers face. Bruce Lewis left the Lisp world after completing MIT 6.001 (Structure and Interpetation of Computer Programs) in Spring, 1987. Ten years later, seeking a better way to write database-driven web applications, he created <a href="http://brl.sourceforge.net/">BRL</a>, the "Beautiful Report Language", an alternative to Perl ("Practical Extraction and Report Language") that dominated web development at the time. Bruce lives in Beverly, Massachusetts with his wife and three children. * * Richard Kreuter will speak about Defsystems and deliverables, or, unary REQUIRE for the win! Common Lisp users have employed a succession of system construction tools ("defsystems") over the years. Howsoever good a defsystem tool might be, overuse of system construction tools creates needless technical and social problems in the community and confounds newcomer and professional alike. This presentation will cover some of the drawbacks of the traditional uses of defsystems, and proposes some approaches to deploying Lisp software intended to make Lisp library usage more tractable than defsystems make it. Richard Kreuter is a software developer in the Boston area. He has worked on Steel Bank Common Lisp, driven himself nuts by too much reading of the Common Lisp standard, and is likely to be the last person on earth who thinks CL's pathnames still are a good idea. * * * Having observed the success of the formula at ILC'2009, we have instituted Lightning Talks at the Boston Lisp Meeting. At every meeting, before the main talk, there are two slots for strictly timed 5-minute talks followed by 2-minute for questions and answers. The slots for next Monday are still open. Step up and come talk about your pet project! * * * * The Lisp Meeting will take place on Monday June 29th 2009 at 1800 (6pm) at MIT, Room 34-401B. As the numbers indicate, the room is in Building 34, on the 4th floor. This is the usual location, on 50 Vassar Street, Cambridge. MIT map: http://whereis.mit.edu/bin/map?selection=34 Google map: http://maps.google.com/maps?q=50+Vassar+St,+Cambridge,+MA+02139,+USA Many thanks go to Alexey Radul for arranging for the room, and to MIT for welcoming us. * * * * * Dinner: ITA Software, a fine employer of Lisp hackers (disclaimer: I work there), is kindly purchasing a buffet to accompany our monthly Boston Lisp meeting. Anyone who attends is welcome to partake. We appreciate it if you let us know you're coming, and what food taboos you have, so that we can order the correct amount of food. Tell us by sending email to boston-lisp-meeting-register at common-lisp.net. We won't send any acknowledgement unless requested; importantly, we'll keep your identity and address confidential and won't communicate any such information to anyone, not even to our sponsors. * * * * * * The previous Boston Lisp Meeting on May 26th had 40 participants. Norman Ramsey gave a talk about Using Higher-Order Functions and Continuation-Passing Style to Make Dataflow Optimization Simple. In the near future, we expect to have Bruce Lewis on 2009-07-27 about BRL http://brl.codesimply.net and ourdoings.com, Emmanuel Schanzer on 2009-08-31 about BootstrapWorld.org, and Christine Flood on some undetermined date about Fortress http://projectfortress.sun.com * * * * * * * We're always looking for more speakers. The call for speakers and all the other details are at http://fare.livejournal.com/120393.html Also sought are volunteers to give Lightning Talks http://fare.livejournal.com/143723.html For more information, see our web site boston-lisp.org. 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