SPLASH 2011: Dave Thomas - On Modern Application Development

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It's been a while since we've been lucky enough to catch up with Dave Thomas. Dave is well known for his work in object oriented programming language design, dynamic language development (SmallTalk), and virtual machines. Dave did the initial development of the Eclipse IDE and is currently the CEO of Bedarra Corporation. Dave is a recognized leader in the discipline of making software. A godfather in software engineering. Many technical conferences benefit from his support and influence.

Here, we learn about the history of SPLASH and find out what's on Dave's mind with respect to modern app development methodologies. Dave shares his wise opinions on the state of objects, JavaScript, Dart, browser DOM, model-driven development, IDEs, and more. Dave is on a mission to democratize software engineering for the masses by removing unnecessary complexity in programming abstractions (has Dave lost his faith in objects?). What does this mean?

Thank you for spending time with C9, Dave! Always a pleasure. We'll see you again at YOW! 2011

Tune in. Enjoy.

Time codes (thanks to George!):

[00:30] history of SPLASH events since the 1986 beginnings

[02:17] - ref to Ivan Sutherland's amazing SPLASH talk

[02:50] concurrency & parallel programming & the role of hardware / software co-design

[04:40] one of the problems in computer science is that most of the students don't know what is involved in hardware & virtual machines

[05:08] the need to go back to old days feeling of growing hardware / software knowledge together

[05:30] what's the state of object oriented programming?  Commercially imensely succesful but practical is a disaster since it is difficult for people to do abstractions  6:18 F# is a great language but it is hard to use

[06:45] challenge: complexity is exposed and people get lost in this sea of complexity

[07:00] refactoring in practice is difficult for big projects, the tools and practices are not there

[07:16] Object-oriented technology doesn't have the old 4 generation languages (4GL) like Excel & Access

[07:32] ref to the easy of use of some older MS product

[07:50] as we move into the cloud, the challenge is how do we democratise the programming process

[08:15] the need to setup up a Hadoop cluster to search large data, is questioned

[09:02] notion of Virtual machine in the sky and what's Dave's take on Javascript?

[10:30] one of the challenges of Javascript is having too many ways to do things

[11:00] Dart might help Javascript to be more modular

[12:14] there is still lots of room for innovation on the web & mobile. Current impedance mismatch between DOM (in C++) and Javascript, needs to be solved

[14:22] end-user programming comments

[16:20]  reference to a SPLASH paper on direct Mathlab compilation into code.  - mathlab issue translating to c++ (v.s. wiring into silicon)    - going directly from the model to silicon

[16:50] ref to Simulink, compiling Mathlab to GPU & going from brain to code

[17:30] declarative specifications open opportunities for parallelism

[17:53] ref to a SPLASH talk on spreadsheet processed by multicores

[18:18] there is a huge benefit to go directly from model to code

[19:30] reference to model-driven development

[19:55] a lot can be done with the spreadsheets

[21:27] the challenge of slow software

[21:47] the need to be greener in writing software to reduce cycles

[22:20] the state of IDEs.   - Current IDEs cannot refactor huge code

[23:50] - there is a real opportunity for IDEs to breakthrough    - their philosophy needs to change

[25:45] comments on the current tendency to move into the cloud

[29:00] parallelism is a tough problem

Recently, Channel 9 was invited to attend the great SPLASH conference. What is SPLASH? Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity. A big thanks to the SPLASH event organizers for inviting me and my camera to engage some key computer scientists and engineers in geeky, fun conversation! SPLASH is a great event! I learned a ton and met many amazing computer scientists and students.

SPLASH is an annual conference that embraces all aspects of software construction and delivery, and that joins all factions of programming technologies. Since 2010 SPLASH is the umbrella for OOPSLA and Onward! [source=splashcon.org]