SPLASH 2011: William Cook - Objects, Orc, Hybrid Partial Evaluation, and More

William Cook is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on object-oriented programming, programming language design, and the interaction between programming languages and databases. William was the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Allegis Corporation, where he was chief architect for several award-winning products, including the eBusiness Suite at Allegis, the Writer's Solution for Prentice Hall. William also invented the AppleScript language while at Apple Computer.

William's current research projects include:

Ensō: theoretically sound and practical reformulation of the concepts of model-driven software development

Batches: a new approach to RPC, database access (SQL clients), and web services

Orc: a language for structured concurrency and internet programming

Hybrid Partial Evaluation: a practical approach to partial evaluation in object-oriented languages

Here, we discuss William's colorful past, his thoughts on object orientation, Orc, hybrid partial evaluation, and more. He and his team of talented students are pushing the envelope. Tune in.

Thanks for spending time with Channel 9, William!

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]