Unformed thoughts from SPA'05
I've just returned from the SPA'05
conference where Steve
Freeman and I gave a presentation on
Embedded Domain Specific Languages in Java. The best aspect of
the conference is the mind-stretching conversation that occurs over
coffee, dinner, beer and scotch until late at night early in
the morning. Here are a few of the thoughts, questions and wierd
facts that emerged over the four days:
* Intentional programming and intentional computing look like being important new ways of thinking about computers. But what does "intent" really mean?
* Could Stockholm Syndrome help us manage user expectations?
* Software should be turtles all the way down.
* Semiotics. How can we use it to think about software? And what is it anyway?
* How much syntax do we really need? Or... how little syntax can we get away with? We need a syntax liberation front. Rise up! You have nothing to lose but your tool chains.
* If a round-trip modelling tool can generate runnable code from a model and a model from runnable code, is it even a model any more? Isn't it just another representation of the code? So why call it a model?
* Pigs can lie.
* Creating vapourware is much harder than I expected.
* Why on earth didn't I learn to program in OCaml before?