Richard Cobbe’s thesis looks interesting: Mainstream object-oriented languages include a null value that inhabits every object type and that pervades programs. It exists both because the language semantics requires it in certain places and because it is the most convenient representation for common patterns, such as for sentinel values indicating failure. Safety requires implementations of [...]
It seems that you can cross compile Java to Objective-C on the iPhone. I didn’t dig any deeper than that. Here is the blurb for the technologies used: The goal of XMLVM is to offer a flexible and extensible cross-compiler toolchain. Instead of cross-compiling on a source code level, XMLVM cross-compiles byte code instructions from [...]
I had always wondered if it was .NET alone that had inspired Sun to add generics to Java. Perhaps, as you will see here, there was a little more to the story! On slide 24 I mention Philip Wadler and Martin Odersky. At this point in the talk I repeated an anecdote that Wadler told [...]
Carneades is an argument mapping application, with a graphical user interface, and a software library for building applications supporting various argumentation tasks. The interesting thing about this is that it is written in both JavaFX and R6RS Scheme! (via comp.lang.scheme)
This presentation at JavaOne 08 could have been called “Features in Java 7 that people will love and wonder why it took so long to get them”. The topic was JSR-277: The Java Module System. Here is the 20K foot summary: Give modules (roughly jars) first class language support Provide support for module composition at [...]
At Java One 08 Neal Gafter gave the “Closure Cookbook” on Closures in Java; in particular the BGGA implementation that he is proposing as a JSR. To sum up the presentation, it was about closures, in Java. In particular, it went into explaining what are closures and how you might use them. The tough, and [...]
Is Sun in touch with Java developers? The entire keynote was spent talking about how developers are soon going to be able to write applets that run on a desktop, in a web browser, and also on a phone. We have had this for years. Whose idea was this? The really interesting stuff in Java [...]
There is a widespread belief among most Java programmers that while syntactic extension is indeed valuable, its introduction to Java would result in, among other things, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – in other words: mass hysteria. What I meant by “most programmers” is really just one Java programmer, Gilad Bracha. Ostensibly Gilad [...]