INDUSTRY

Dr. Richard Rashid, founder and head of Microsoft Research, and Jaron Lanier of Interstellar Computer Science Institute are the keynote speakers at OOPSLA 2004, which runs from October 24-28, in Vancouver, BC. On October 26, Rashid addresses changes in software development and how they will affect the way we think of programming in the next 10 years. Lanier presents a survey of confirmed alien information technologies and how they informed the future of human IT on October 28. The premier forum for sharing knowledge on object technology, OOPSLA 2004 will also host ACM’s prestigious Turing Lecture, to be delivered by Alan Kay, the newly named Turing Award winner, on Tuesday, Oct. 26, at 5:30 p.m. PST. Alan Kay will address what he sees as a disturbing trend in computing which he dubs “science and engineering envy.” His talk will propose ways to introduce computing to beginners to help them see the real beauties and possibilities of the field, and to encourage them to make qualitative improvements in the field. Dr. Kay won the ACM 2003 Turing Award for pioneering many of the ideas at the root of contemporary object-oriented programming languages, and for leading the team that developed Smalltalk. The conference, sponsored by ACM and ACM SIGPLAN, brings together practitioners, researchers and students to share their ideas and experiences. It includes a technical program of papers, panels, practitioner reports, tutorials, workshops and demos. OOPSLA 2004 is again hosting an ACM SIGPLAN Student Research Competition, where students meet and interact with researchers and share opportunities to learn of ongoing, current research. The conference runs from October 24-28, at the Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. OOPSLA 2004 also features invited talks by Steve McConnell of Construx on “Code Complete 2: Realities of Modern Software Construction”; Allan Vermeulen of Amazon, on “inside Amazon Web Services”; Ward Cunningham of Microsoft on “Objects, Patterns, Wiki and XP: All Systems of Names”; and Herb Sutter of Microsoft on “Concrete Languages on Virtual Platforms.” The conference includes tutorials, technical presentations, and workshops from some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in object-oriented technology. For more information, or to register, click on http://www.oopsla.org/2004/ .