Dr. Gilad Bracha: The Newspeak Programming Language
Coordinates: March 11, 2008, 16:00-17:00,
HPI, B-E.2 (library)
Potsdam, Germany
Abstract: Newspeak is a new dynamic language, descended from
Smalltalk and Self. Like Self, Newspeak is a message based language:
all computation - even an object's own access to its internal
structure - is performed by sending messages to objects. However,
like Smalltalk, Newspeak is class-based. Classes can be nested
arbitrarily, as in Beta. Since all names denote message sends, all
classes are virtual; in particular, superclasses are virtual, so all
classes act as mixins. There is no static state in Newspeak. Instead,
top level classes act as module definitions, which are independent,
immutable, self-contained parametric namespaces. They can be
instantiated into modules which may be stateful and mutually
recursive. Naturally, like its predecessors, Newspeak is reflective:
a mirror library allows structured access to the program meta-level.
In this talk, we'll expand on these topics, illustrating interesting
uses such as class hierarchy inheritance and domain specific language
support.
Bio: Gilad Bracha is a Distinguished Engineer at Cadence Design
Systems. Previously, he was a Computational Theologist and
Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. He is co-author of the
Java Language Specification, and a researcher in the area of object-
oriented programming languages. Prior to joining Sun, he worked on
Strongtalk, the Animorphic Smalltalk System. He received his B.Sc in
Mathematics and Computer Science from Ben Gurion University in Israel
and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah.
http://www.swa.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/Getting there:
http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/hpi/campus/anfahrt.html
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