workshops |
monday |
20 |
Thinking with Prototypes |
convention centre burrard ii |
Prototype-based programming is an alternative to the traditional class-based object-oriented model. In this model there are no classes, rather, new kinds of objects are formed more directly by composing concrete, fully-fledged objects, which are often referred to as prototypes. When compared to class-based languages, prototype-based languages are conceptually simpler, and have many other characteristics that make them appealing, especially for the development of evolving, exploratory, and distributed software systems. Yet prototypes are still relatively unknown outside the research world, and the number of industrial applications relying on prototypes is minimal compared to the number of applications relying on more mainstream object technology.
In this workshop we will examine the state-of-the-art in prototype-based object-oriented programming, focusing especially on the design side of prototypes, or more generally, how to think in a prototype-based fashion. This side of prototypes has until recently been mostly ignored in the literature. More specifically, the workshop will address the following issues:
Potential workshop participants will be invited to submit short papers describing their perspective on prototypes, and these will be reviewed by the organisers. To ensure creativity, the morning of the workshop will be occupied by short presentations to the whole workshop from selected participants, followed in the afternoon by demonstrations of selected participants work, and then general discussions. If necessary, attendance to the workshop will be limited to enable fruitful discussion.
Antero Taivalsaari, Sun Microsystems Laboratories
Email: antero.taivalsaari@eng.sun.com
James Noble, Microsoft Research Institute