Richard P Gabriel's Blog

OOPSLA 2005

"I think OOPSLA is the best d*mned programming conference in the world: there is nothing else like it. OOPSLA is where people learn what they need today—and learn what they will be doing tomorrow. This is as true for programmers in the trenches as it is for researchers and academics and educators." [Long-time OOPSLA Attendee / Iconoclast]

OOPSLA was founded in 1986 by the earliest of early adopters: researchers and practitioners thrilled by the prospects of object-oriented programming. Now, as we convene for the twentieth time, objects are utterly mainstream, the very foundation of a great deal of the world's software. But the thrill of creation is addictive, and OOPSLA has developed a strong tradition of being the spawning ground for new ideas, artifacts, and movements—things like software patterns, aspects, refactoring, reflection, Eclipse, UML, and the Agile methods. At OOPSLA, languages like Smalltalk, CLOS, C++, Beta, Self, Eiffel, C#, and Java have sprouted and bloomed, contributing their underlying ideas and expressive power to the pool of computing concepts. OOPSLA strives to mingle people on the vanguard of research, and practitioners in the trenches who are reflecting upon and trying to understand just about every facet of software and programming.

People at OOPSLA like to interact in all sorts of ways, so we have papers, posters, and presentations; workshops, tutorials, and essays; lightning talks, panels, and films; and receptions, BoFs, and a special event—this year it's the San Diego Zoo. All this plus Practitioner's Reports, DesignFest, and Camp Smalltalk.

People at OOPSLA like to learn from each other and from the masters, so we have sessions selected from the very cream of our carefully refereed submissions, alongside talks and events planned around invited participants. This year we have people who built the mainstream: people like Grady Booch (co-creator of the Unified Process) and Ralph Johnson (coauthor of Design Patterns); we have people who challenge the mainstream like Ward Cunningham (inventor of Wikis), Dave Ungar (inventor of Self), Kent Beck (software patterns, XP), and James Noble; we have people who insist on inventing the future like Gerry Sussman (co-inventor of Scheme), Jimmy Wales (the father of Wikipedia), and David P. Reed (inventor of the TCP/IP end-to-end argument and co-developer of Croquet, the ultimately flexible tool for exploration); and we have people who buttress the present like Martin Fowler and Mary Beth Rosson.

This year we have two co-located conferences devoted to topics that are only now entering into the early mainstream: the Dynamic Languages Symposium and the Social Software Symposium. Our focus is on creativity and innovation, anchored by a keynote by Robert Hass (the former poet laureate of the United States), continuing with the Working With Vision panel, and The Instant Art School Experience.

We are especially proud of Onward!, our innovative track for altering or redefining the art by proposing leaps forward—or sideways.

We'll even take a look Backward!, in a retrospective session celebrating the tenth anniversary of Java, featuring Guy L. Steele Jr., and with a multimedia reminiscence of OOPSLAs gone by, featuring an all-star cast.

There's a lot to learn about OOPSLA. Visit the OOPSLA website to get it all.

Comments

• Great to see a Dynamic Languages Symposium co-located with Oopsla.

  For people who, like me, learnt to program in C/C++ and then in Java, "OOP" became sinonymous of static languages and big design up front. I think this is unfortunate. Im glad I learnt lisp and the CLOS on my own, or I would have always kept the idea of "OOP" being somehow rigid and unnatural.

  Thanks RPG for your work, as well as for your several writings. They are, for me, the best written documents in the field. "Patterns of Software" is an amazing book that I have recommended all my friends to read.

  Posted by: sergiogarcia on September 13, 2005 at 01:27 AM

• Umm, when's the last time oopsla actuall had a real change in the language world? No, generics don't count, they're 20 years old.

  Posted by: smartinumcp on September 13, 2005 at 07:04 AM

• Unrelated note: what if anything has happened in the Feyerabend project? If you wish, you can e-mail me torbjorn dot gannholm at swipnet dot se

  Posted by: tobega on September 13, 2005 at 07:12 AM

• sergiongarcia -

  Err.. a "dynamic language" called Smalltalk was the main exponent of OO until very recently. Python and esp Ruby have features that merely popularize Smalltalk features that Java wasn't able to.

  Also, lots of Smalltalkers in the early days doubted if that a statically typed language could really be OO (they were voicing their concern). Having spent the last 10 years in OO with C++ and Java, I definitely can see the limitations these languages impose on you.
  

  Posted by: dog on September 13, 2005 at 08:28 PM

• Dog, I don't agree with you "until very recently". If you got into programming within the last 10/15 years, like most people in their 20s, it is more likely you were exposed not to smalltalk but to C++ and then to Java as the languages to do OOP.

  Posted by: sergiogarcia on September 15, 2005 at 05:27 AM

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