You're not allowed to say objects.
I don't know, of course, but I have some ideas.
We could start by saying what we're not. We're not talking all computer science; no OS or AI or NA or graphics. Generally, it's about building real, running software that people will use (although we don't do HCI) in a real setting. To focus even more, although we talk a lot about languages, we're not really about language design, so we're not POPL or PLDI.
That's a start. But more: it's about a certain philosophy of what makes good software (good according to what criteria, though?): a certain belief about organization and structure, of both code and people. This belief, although I can't concisely articulate it, inhabits objects, aspects, agile methodologies, patterns, and even web services.
More yet: it's about becoming a master programmer, about moving up one level from code wage slave. Perhaps one reason OOPSLA is declining is because, well, the field is becoming full of fairly low-skill coders who cut and paste to customize SAP (or whatever) for specific clients. We're not about that kind of coding.
So. Advanced Software Technologies. Principles and Practices of Software Creation.
Exercise for the reader: how are we different from a Software Engineering conference? How are we different from an O'Reilly
[Who]]
Oops - sorry. I did. GeoffCohen
[I]
Thanks!
from the Software Development conferences because of the academic
emphasis. OOPSLA is a software engineering conference, but itis different from ICSE because it is slanted much more heavily
to industry. And the industry it is slanted towards is morelike banks and insurance companies than military suppliers.
Though I talked to an interesting person from Boeing last OOPSLA,so we have a few of these.
The thing that makes OOPSLA interesting is that it is a
place where academics and professional programmers can meetand both feel at home. At least, that is how this academic
sees it. -RalphJohnsonI agree: One of the things that makes OOPSLA interesting for me is that it is a
place where I, an academic, gets to meet and talk to professional programmers, people who really build software for a living. I learn a lot from them about what I should be teaching software developers of the near future. I also learn a lot from them about how to teach better. I hope that they profit from my attendance, too, but that's hard to say.To me OOPSLA has always been more about doing stuff than talking about doing stuff. Academic conferences often talk about things that are important, but they don't generally make the connection to practice. -EugeneWallingford
Q: what do you get when three professors agree about something?
I've never been to many SoftwareEngineering conferences. If I'm lucky, I get to go to one US conference a year, and OOPSLA has been it since - oh 1995 or so? And I go for the same reasons as Ralph and Eugene. The BestPractice and the BestResearch in the kind of programming my students are likely to do ends up at OOPSLA more often than not. I, literally, get to find out what research and teaching to do in the comming year by going to OOPSLA (and I get my summer to think it all out).
I'm tempted to write that ''OOPSLA is the only academic conference that addresses mainstream imperative programming'' or some such thing. Everything else is either esoteric (POPL/PLDI, the kind of work that either requires two lifetimes of category theory or an entire IBM lab to do), overspecialised (conferences on - e.g. Ada, UML, AOP, functional languages), or not about programming. - JamesNoble
I started going to OOPSLA on the one hand and the academic software engineering conferences (ICSE, ESEC, SIGSOFT) on the other hand at around 1995; my memory is still fresh in how they differed: SIGSOFT specifically was very academic, top-down structured in terms of who had to say something and who was heard, and it was about academic careers. My perception of OOPLSA in turn was attendance was much more varied, the conference itself in all its extensions was almost anarchic, and very different careers were being enabled and made. OOPSLA was on the edge of chaos, and SIGSOFT was too rigid.
I think in terms of core meaning, it must also be social, along the lines that OOPSLA is the place where it is happening, see AttractingTrendSetters and CareerBuildingAtOopsla. --DirkRiehle
I agree - I think the core meaning is social. The idea of technical publication has been radically altered by the web. We no longer need conferences or journals to publish or read articles and reports. A simple Google search and there's more data at my fingertips than I can process. To deal with all that data and turn it into information, I need to establish a social network of people whose ideas and opinions I trust. That can best be done in person, thus the purpose of the conference.
--BjornFreemanBensonJudging from the technical papers submitted and accepted at
the last two !OOPSLAs, the core meaning of OOPSLA is garbagecollection (which topic used to have its home at the
ACM Conference on Lisp and Functional Programming untilit morphed into ICFP). -GuySteele
According to http:/www.acm.orgsigssigplanconferences.htm.
OOPSLA is the premier conference on object technology.But I think it is (or could or should be) more than that. SIGPLAN is for programming languages, which are the tools of programmers for programming. Neither SIGPLAN (as far as I can see) nor the ACM has any other conference dedicated primarily to the profession (or practice if you prefer) of programming.
The key to what OOPSLA really is is in its name: Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications. What we've inadvertently done was to create one of its specialty areas before creating the more general conference. We created OO-PSLA. There might also be F(unctional)PSLA, L(ogic programming)PSLA, etc.
Most of the other ACM conferences focus on technology, usually foundational technology and the science and mathematics behind it. Our conference is about programming, broadly construed. ICSE seems to focus on the engineering aspect of creating software, usually by teams. PSLA would include some of that the same way it currently includes things that otherwise be in POPL and PLDI. The real distinction between all these conferences is the sort of audience it draws. We draw people who "invent" patterns, extreme programming, test-driven design, UML, wikis, etc, which are to make programming easier, to make languages easier to work, to make systems work better, and to make better applications. Not necessarily as a theoretic activity, but as a real one. Hackers go to PSLA. -rpg
I like this comment. Over the years I've tried to make the point that programming (even in its "hacking" form) is not precisely like anything else that people do, but is like everything that people do all at once: Programming is not engineering, but programmers do engineering, programming is not art, but programmers need to be artists, etc. The totality of the activity of programming is not like any one thing people do, but because people are people, we bring to bear all our ways of doing things - alone, in groups.
It took humanity a long time to recognize that complexity and nonlinearity were central to existence, and not part of the linear, reductionist thinking and approaches we were used to. And so these things were treated like games. Remember when Scientific American ran dozens or hundreds of columns by Martin Gardner or people like him about fractals and weird things like that?
It has taken (or is taking) humanity a long time to realize that something like this is true of programming as well. In a real sense, programming is about creating a universe filled with artifacts and life that must interact reasonably with our own.
Hackers were the first to notice, appreciate, and embrace this reality. Since then we have done next to nothing, as Crista says, to help mature and deepen the discipline that is lurking there. -rpg
The Core Meaning of OOPSLA, to me, was to roll around in the latest new and useful ideas in software development, and to bask in the light of the top contributors to our profession.
There has been some great stuff in OOPSLA from the academic side. Some of my most valuable learnings have come from there over the years.
My recollection is that many other great things I found at OOPSLA-of-old were not from the academic side. Surely recently we had the process wars, but there was earlier material, talks by Booch and others were just as exciting as those by Dave Ungar or Ralph Johnson. And some awesome keynotes.
So I'm suggesting salting the conference liberally with interesting, bordering on flaky ideas from inside and outside academia, and outside the object notion as well. Some thoughts on that: IsAnyoneDoingAnythingInteresting?
--RonJeffriesFrom CristaLopes:
... Programming is inclusive of expressing ideas with restrictive languages, using tools, applying methods, exercising theories, instantiating models, ... and therefore requires better languages, tools, methods, theories and models. That, in turn, embodies a mix of engineering, math, cog sci, philosophy and even art -- but none of these in isolation. The discipline of programming is a species of its own. We need a conference about this! -CristaLopes
It looks to me as if the two North American Agile conferences (Agile Development Conference and XP/Agile Universe) are competing for that market. I expect that they'll only get more focused on that after they merge (2005).
I suspect the Onward! mini-conference would fit at least as well at those conferences as at OOPSLA.
MaryLynnManns will be the academic chair for the merged conference - any thoughts?
I think Oopsla is about a general idea of Software Design. But that's
not all that's going on.I suggest that a core concept of Oopsla was something like a "Pax
Objectica". It laid the ground rule that it things should be withinObject Orientation, but then was almost universally welcoming. It was
and is positive, does surprisingly well at avoiding wars betweencompeting elements, and promotes and supports collaborative work on
new ideas. I think the involvement of both industry people andacademics is vital: having both kinds of people involved in almost any
meeting is a very healthy thing. The support for educators isadmirable in the EducatorsSymposium, and been a force for good in software education. The feel
of Oopsla is quite different to other conferences because of theopenness. Some software engineering conferences seem like academic
closed shops, others seem to have a prescriptive line that programmingreally should be more like mathematics, or like engineering. Oopsla,
other than the backdrop of OO, doesn't seem to have an agenda, doesn'tpretend that all the problems are really solved, doesn't seem to imply
you are stupid or ignorant or unwelcome.-- RobertBiddle
Why isn't it this:
The ultimate goal of all computer science is the program.
Designers, programmers and engineers must once again come to know and comprehend the composite character of a program, both as an entity and in terms of its various parts.
-rpg
maybe because: The ultimate goal of computer science is the proof.
Objects represent an idea that transcends the program to
incorporate UI (converstional interaction), problem spacemodeling (Simula), process (iterative incremental experimental
exploratory), religion (language and method wars), psychology(user illusion), radicalism (objects are revolutionary) .....
-davewest