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David Ungar is a visionary computer scientist and engineer currently working at http://www.research.ibm.com/" target="_blank IBM Research . He is the co-creator of the object-oriented http://selflanguage.org/" target="_blank Self programming language , which is a language influenced by SmallTalk and one that has influenced many other languages, not the least of which is todays darling of the web, JavaScript. Self has also helped move virtual machine evolution forward (interestingly, Googles Lars Bak (V8) was at one point Davids employer).
Its an honor to finally have David on Channel 9, to get to ask him about what inspired the Self project, what hes up to today, and what he thinks are currently the biggest problems in computing. Of course, David has lately been busy working on the concurrency problem—how does one reasonably program 1,000 core machines, anyway? Heres an excerpt from the description of http://splashcon.org/2011/program/dls/245-invited-talk-2" target="_blank his excellent SPLASH 2011 talk on how to think about and program ManyCore (I was there. Dave is (again) way ahead of his time for sure, and hes working with a great cast including Sam Adams, Doug Kimelman, and Mark Wegman ...):
In our http://soft.vub.ac.be/~smarr/renaissance/%20," target="_blank Renaissance project at IBM, Brussels, and Portland State, we are investigating what we call "anti-lock," "race-and-repair," or "end-to-end nondeterministic" computing. As part of this effort, we have built a Smalltalk system that runs on the 64-core Tilera chip, and have experimented with dynamic languages atop this system. When we give up synchronization, we of necessity give up determinism. There seems to be a fundamental tradeoff between determinism and performance, just as there once seemed to be a tradeoff between static checking and performance. The obstacle we shall have to overcome, if we are to successfully program manycore systems, is our cherished assumption that we write programs that always get the exactly right answers. This assumption is deeply embedded in how we think about programming. The folks who build web search engines already understand, but for the rest of us, to quote Firesign Theatre: Everything You Know Is Wrong!
Recently, Channel 9 was invited to attend the great http://www.splashcon.org/2011/" target="_blank 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] <img src="http://m.webtrends.com/dcs1wotjh10000w0irc493s0e_6x1g/njs.gif?dcssip=channel9.msdn.com&dcsuri=http://channel9.msdn.com/Feeds/RSS&WT.dl=0&WT.entryid=Entry:RSSView:28a774122541485797f19f8e012b0579
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Its an honor to finally have David on Channel 9, to get to ask him about what inspired the Self project, what hes up to today, and what he thinks are currently the biggest problems in computing. Of course, David has lately been busy working on the concurrency problem—how does one reasonably program 1,000 core machines, anyway? Heres an excerpt from the description of http://splashcon.org/2011/program/dls/245-invited-talk-2" target="_blank his excellent SPLASH 2011 talk on how to think about and program ManyCore (I was there. Dave is (again) way ahead of his time for sure, and hes working with a great cast including Sam Adams, Doug Kimelman, and Mark Wegman ...):
In our http://soft.vub.ac.be/~smarr/renaissance/%20," target="_blank Renaissance project at IBM, Brussels, and Portland State, we are investigating what we call "anti-lock," "race-and-repair," or "end-to-end nondeterministic" computing. As part of this effort, we have built a Smalltalk system that runs on the 64-core Tilera chip, and have experimented with dynamic languages atop this system. When we give up synchronization, we of necessity give up determinism. There seems to be a fundamental tradeoff between determinism and performance, just as there once seemed to be a tradeoff between static checking and performance. The obstacle we shall have to overcome, if we are to successfully program manycore systems, is our cherished assumption that we write programs that always get the exactly right answers. This assumption is deeply embedded in how we think about programming. The folks who build web search engines already understand, but for the rest of us, to quote Firesign Theatre: Everything You Know Is Wrong!
Recently, Channel 9 was invited to attend the great http://www.splashcon.org/2011/" target="_blank 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] <img src="http://m.webtrends.com/dcs1wotjh10000w0irc493s0e_6x1g/njs.gif?dcssip=channel9.msdn.com&dcsuri=http://channel9.msdn.com/Feeds/RSS&WT.dl=0&WT.entryid=Entry:RSSView:28a774122541485797f19f8e012b0579
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