Recap of 4/18 meeting: http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/recap-of-4182008-chicago-lisp-meeting/

ITEMS OF BUSINESS:

Name - None of the name ideas got much support, so we're sticking with Chicago Lisp until someone comes up with something awesomer.

Project - No one had any ideas for or time to work on a project as a group so that's also waiting for an awesomer idea.

Server - John and Craig both have servers where they can host things but not allow remote access to. John has a basic homepage at http://www.chicaglisp.org and has a mailing list setup. There might be a wiki in the future. Meeting announcements and recaps will continue to be on Peter's Chicago Lisp page and then cross posted to the two mailing lists and the chicagolisp.org site.

Next Meeting

WHEN: Friday, May 16th at 7pm.

WHERE: TBD (suggest a place)

WHAT: Lightning talks. The following people have signed up, more welcome (email Peter if interested or add a comment at Coordinatr)

Intro to Lisp Workshop: We did some pre-planning and delegation. See details here.

Presentation on Combined Object-Lambda Architectures (COLAs):

The inagural presentation of our group was about the work done by the Viewpoints Research Institure (VPRI). The most recognizable name associated with this is Alan Kay, Mr. Invent the Future himself. John Quigley made an excellent slide deck (pdf) where he reviewed the paper "Making COLAs with Pepsi and Coke" (pdf) by Ian Piumarta and put into slightly more comprensible language.

This paper is for the Fundamental New Computer Technologies project at VPRI. The aim of the project is to create a complete computing system in 20,000 lines of code. This system would be everything from the hardware to the UI and include both design and implementation. Having such a compact system would be a useful exploration and learning tool, so every part of it can be inspected and manipulated. They're currently 18 months into a 5 year project but they already have made intriguing progress.

John's presentation was about the architecture of the self bootstrapping system. I can't claim that I understood it all, or even most of it. I was able to keep up mostly because I had come across VPRI's work on Jeff Moser's blog earlier in the week so I was familiar with the overview. What I did sort of grasp boggled my mind and definintely but VPRI on my technical radar, if for no other reason than as a technical challenge to aspire to.

If you can understand everything in Piumarta's paper (or even in John's summary deck), you're a whiz. If not, don't feel bad. I would recommend reading the NSF proposal (pdf) and the first year progress report (pdf). They're in more accessible, less technically deep language and they have pretty pictures.

Thanks John for setting the bar high right out of the gate!




On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 10:09 PM, Peter Christensen <peter@pchristensen.com> wrote:
Fine with me too.  I'll have the recaps up this weekend - they're mostly written but I was waiting on the date for the workshop before I posted them.

-Peter


On Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 9:11 PM, Craig Ludington <cl@craig.upholsters.us> wrote:
John Quigley writes:
 > I've tentatively scheduled the first Lisp Workshop for Saturday, May 31, 2008 at 3:00pm at the Institute of Design[1] in downtown Chicago (right by the Clark/Lake El stop).  More details to come, but I want to first confirm that this date works with the various volunteers who will be teaching.

That date is fine with me.

Craig
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Peter Christensen
http://www.pchristensen.com/
peter@pchristensen.com



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Peter Christensen
http://www.pchristensen.com/
peter@pchristensen.com