Keynotes

The Art of Programming Language Design: Confessions of a Connoiseur

Gilad Bracha, Google

The field of programming languages is an art, albeit an applied one. It is much like architecture. It requires engineering, which is informed by science, but cannot be confused with either.

We live in an age of popular culture, and programming languages are no exception. In such a climate, the great works of the past tend to be forgotten, and the wheel is often reinvented badly. To do better requires both knowledge and taste: in a word, connoisseurship.

As an applied art, we must make both aesthetic and utilitarian judgements about programming languages. Typically utility dominates, but our goal should be a design where the two complement each other.

To that end, I’ll present and defend a personal aesthetic with respect to programming languages and systems. You may find it illuminating or aggravating or both.

Gilad Bracha is the creator of the Newspeak programming language and a software engineer at Google where he works on Dart. Previously, he was a VP at SAP Labs, a Distinguished Engineer at Cadence, and a Computational Theologist and Distinguished Engineer at Sun. He is co-author of the Java Language Specification, and a researcher in the area of object-oriented programming languages. Prior to joining Sun, he worked on Strongtalk, the Animorphic Smalltalk System. He received his B.Sc in Mathematics and Computer Science from Ben Gurion University in Israel and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah.

Cloud Centric Networking

Greg Page, Cisco

Cloud computing / 'ITaaS' places new demands on infrastructure requiring the network to open up to application developers and become more agile through embedded intelligence. This presentation will focus on key areas of contemporary networking development and concepts such as 'Software Defined Networking'(SDN), network service abstractions and 'Autonomic Networking'.

Greg is a solutions architect at Cisco in the EMEA and Russia organization and is part of a team that is responsible for leading Data Centre & Cloud solutions. Greg has worked with Cisco's partners to deploy a number of innovative firsts, for example IP/MPLS in a mobile networking and launching a Compute as a Service (CaaS) platform within European service providers. Two thirds of Greg's career in the IT industry has been spent working for Cisco in a variety of technical consulting roles, specializing in Data Centre, Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture, and Service Provider security and core IP networking technologies. More recently, Greg co-authored the book 'Cloud Computing: Automating the Virtualized Data Centre'. In addition, Greg holds a BA (Hons) in Economics and is CISSP certified number 77673. Greg lives in Windsor, Berkshire with his wife Rebecca.