[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

type theory and practice



Date: Thu, 29 Sep 88 14:56:42 PDT

Earlier this week, Luca Cardelli and I gave a half-day
tutorial on "semantic methods for object-oriented
languages" at the ACM OOPSLA (Object-Oriented Programming:
Systems, Languages and Architectures) Conference.
Since our presentation was far more "theoretical" than
anything else at past or present OOPSLA's, we expected
around 30-50 attendees. Instead, the tutorial sold out,
with 210 people paying $100 each. (Too bad we didn't
get a percentage.) We had comments from database 
designers at small companies like, "all of the 
issues you discussed here were problems we had to
confront in designing our object-oriented database
product." So I think type theory is having a significant
impact on computing practice.


(Incidently, the tutorial which was based on our past 
work on types and objects. Specifically, we handed out
Luca's paper in Computing Surveys with Peter Wegner, 
and my paper with Lalita Jategaonkar
>from this year's ACM Lisp and FP conference.)

John Mitchell