For the past few decades, programming language design and implementation research has concentrated heavily in a few notable areas: type theory, functional programming, object-oriented programming, and, of course, optimization techniques. Yet the recent commercially successful languages (e.g., Perl, Python, Visual Basic, Java) are not particularly interesting when judged in these domains. What happened? Each represented a “disruptive technology” that allowed it to capture programmer mindshare while everybody else was looking. In this talk, I will present what I think makes a programming language technology disruptive, and I will propose possible future disruptive programming language technologies.
About the speaker:
Todd Proebsting manages the Programming Language Systems research group at Microsoft Research. His research focuses on programming language design and implementation, and he is particularly interested in languages and tools that increase programmer productivity. Prior to joining Microsoft, he lead research efforts at The University of Arizona that resulted in a very early Java bytecode decompiler, a Java-to-C translator, and a novel implementation of the Icon programming language (http://www.cs.arizona.edu/icon) that targeted the Java Virtual Machine. Since joining Microsoft, he's kicked the Java habit.
Contact information:
Todd A. Proebsting
Microsoft Research
1 Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
(425) 703-8049
(425) 936-7329