+----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | 4th European Lisp Workshop | | July 30 - Berlin, Germany - co-located with ECOOP 2007 | | Supported by Clozure Associates - http://clozure.com | +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ Important Dates Submission deadline (papers & breakout groups): May 31, 2007 Notification of acceptance: June 8, 2007 ECOOP early registration deadline: June 15, 2007 For more information visit http://lisp-ecoop07.bknr.net/ Contact: Pascal Costanza, pc@p-cos.net ********** ** News ** ********** + The submission deadline for papers, essays and breakout group proposals has been extended to May 31. + Alexander Repenning will be giving a keynote presentation about "Antiobjects: Mapping Game AI to Massively Parallel Architectures using Collaborative Diffusion". Modern game consoles offer enormous computational power at very low cost but are difficult to program in a way to make full use of their parallel architectures. The notion of antiobjects is a computational metaphor useful to conceptualize and solve hard problems by swapping computational foreground and background. Putting computation into antiobjects can substantially simplify hard problems in Artificial Intelligence and simulations. Moreover, the mapping of computation from a small number of objects to a much larger number of typically homogenous antiobjects can by employed to parallelize computation in ways that it can be executed on parallel architectures such as GPUs and multi-core CPUs with very little overhead. Alexander Repenning is a computer science professor at the University of Colorado, is currently visiting the University of Lugano, and is the founder of AgentSheets Inc. Repenning’s research interests include education, end-user programmable agents, and artificial intelligence. He has worked in research and development at Asea Brown Boveri, Xerox PARC, Apple Computer, and Hewlett Packard. Organizers ********** Pascal Costanza, Programming Technology Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Theo D'Hondt, Programming Technology Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel Hans Huebner, Software Developer, Berlin Arthur Lemmens, Independent Consultant, Amsterdam Christophe Rhodes, Goldsmiths College, University of London Overview ******** "...Please don't assume Lisp is only useful for Animation and Graphics, AI, Bioinformatics, B2B and E-Commerce, Data Mining, EDA/Semiconductor applications, Expert Systems, Finance, Intelligent Agents, Knowledge Management, Mechanical CAD, Modeling and Simulation, Natural Language, Optimization, Research, Risk Analysis, Scheduling, Telecom, and Web Authoring just because these are the only things they happened to list." -- Kent Pitman Lisp is one of the oldest computer languages still in use today. In the decades of its existence, Lisp has been a fruitful basis for language design experiments as well as the preferred implementation language for applications in diverse fields. The structure of Lisp makes it easy to extend the language or even to implement entirely new dialects without starting from scratch. Common Lisp, with the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), was the first object-oriented programming language to receive an ANSI standard and retains the most complete and advanced object system of any programming language, while influencing many other object-oriented programming languages that followed. It is clear that Lisp is gaining momentum: there is a steadily growing interest in Lisp itself, with numerous user groups in existence worldwide, and in Lisp's metaprogramming notions which are being transferred to other languages, as for example in Aspect-Oriented Programming, support for Domain-Specific Languages, and so on. This workshop will address the near-future role of Lisp-based languages in research, industry and education. We solicit papers and suggestions for breakout groups that discuss the opportunities Lisp provides to capture and enhance the possibilities in software engineering. We want to promote lively discussion between researchers proposing new approaches and practitioners reporting on their experience with the strengths and limitations of current Lisp technologies. The workshop will have two components; there will be formally-presented talks, and for breakout groups discussing or working on particular topics. Additionally, there will be opportunities for short, informal talks and demonstrations on experience reports, underappreciated results, software under development, or other topics of interest. Papers ****** Formal presentations in the workshop should take between 20 minutes and half an hour; additional time will be given for questions and answers. We encourage that papers be published on the website in order to provide background information in advance. Suggested Topics New language features or abstractions Experience reports or case studies Protocol Metaprogramming and Libraries Educational approaches Software Evolution Development Aids Persistent Systems Dynamic Optimization Implementation techniques Innovative Applications Hardware Support for Lisp systems Macro-, reflective-, meta- and/or rule-based development approaches Aspect-Oriented, Domain-Oriented and Generative Programming Breakout Groups *************** The workshop will provide for the opportunity to meet face to face and work on focused topics. We will organize these breakout groups and provide for rooms and infrastructure. Suggested Topics for Breakout Groups Lisp Infrastructure Development and Distribution Language Features (e.g. Predicate Dispatching) Environments for creating web applications Brainstorming sessions for new or existing open source projects Persistence Systems Compiler technology Lisp on bare metal / Lisp hardware / Lisp operating systems Compare and enhance curricula for computer science education Submission Guidelines ********************* Potential attendees are encouraged to submit either of the following: * a long paper (10 pages) presenting scientific and/or empirical results about Lisp-based uses or new approaches for software engineering purposes; * a short essay (5 pages) defending a position about where research, practice or education based on Lisp should be heading in the near future; * a proposal for a breakout group (1-2 pages) describing the theme, an agenda and/or expected results. Submissions should be mailed as PDF to Pascal Costanza (pc@p-cos.net) before the submission deadline. -- Pascal Costanza, mailto:pc@p-cos.net, http://p-cos.net Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Programming Technology Lab Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussel, Belgium