How was the Self-Sustaining Systems thingy? Kragen tried to tempt me into writing a paper to submit -- a pity I didn't really have enough to write up.

(Reply) (Thread)

I enjoyed myself. The conference was well-planned: one day of talks split over two days (start after lunch, finish after lunch) with an excellent dinner in between. No "brain overload" which must have been nice for the presenters.

There were subgroups of Smalltalkers, Lispers (I masqueraded as one to make up the numbers), and Python(eers?) mixing at least somewhat. I insisted on discussing Forth with all of them and they were very nice about that :-). I had an excellent chat with Christophe about bootstrapping and in particular the implications of a rich vs. poor bootstrap language (Common Lisp vs. assembler). I don't think I'd ever met any Python programmers before so that was fun! The profile seemed to be young hackers finishing their masters degrees.

The highlight for me was the Lively demo -- I came out of that thinking "after Forth, Javascript!" Overall I agree with Christophe's comment (http://advogato.org/person/crhodes/diary/126.html) that a lot of the work being presented was in early stages and I couldn't judge whether it was actually any good.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

... oh and I think that Christophe makes an excellent point about the social aspects of SBCL's development. They have grown a large and happy maintainer community around a pretty intimidating piece of software.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I liked his way of pointing that out as projects being parasitic on people. You could think them as memes with a double life-cycle -- using human brains to vary and reproduce, but also using computers to run.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I'm leaning towards Javascript next, too.

BTW I just finished Brinch Hansen's Architecture of Concurrent Programs last week, which I think you recommended once, and it would be quite a neat example of a self-swallowing system if the compiler could have fit in the same book -- perhaps it's a little embarrassing if your compiler is several times larger than your OS. :) Still, a beautiful program -- I feel that in a way I've come across a kindred spirit. The structure is capability-oriented in essence, though it's not clear to me whether he saw capabilities as pointing the same way; the use of 'with' statements certainly didn't go with that understanding -- IMHO the worst fault in his style. Thanks for pushing that book!

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

Cool! I picked up that book after seeing a recommendation from Ralph Johnson on C2 Wiki years ago.

What are you hacking on at the moment?

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

If you end up in Boston, you can sleep on my couch for a few weeks.

(Reply) (Thread)

Hi! What are you doing in Boston?

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)

I moved to Boston January 2008.
I got an XO June 5th 2008!

I was living in Alabama for a year or so before moving to the Northeast USA. I haven't seen Sweden in a long time.

(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)