Could someone please make a recording of this? I can provide hosting
space for it, and I'd be very interested to hear a panel discussion
between Marc and Avi.<br>
<br>
--Benjamin<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 4/15/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Roel Wuyts</b> <<a href="mailto:Roel.Wuyts@ulb.ac.be">Roel.Wuyts@ulb.ac.be</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Web application frameworks in Smalltalk and Common Lisp<br>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++<br>Monday, 25th of April 2005, Vrije Universiteit Brussel<br><a href="http://prog.vub.ac.be/events/2005/BADL/WebApplicationFrameworks.html">
http://prog.vub.ac.be/events/2005/BADL/WebApplicationFrameworks.html</a><br><br>The VUB (Programming Technology Lab), ULB (deComp), Belgian Assocation<br>for Dynamic Languages (BADL) and the Belgian Smalltalk User Group<br>
(BSUG) are very pleased to invite you to two presentations about web<br>application frameworks based on Smalltalk and Common Lisp. The two<br>presenters are the main authors of the respective frameworks and will<br>show you first-hand overviews and illustrate examples from, and
<br>experiences with, real-world use scenarios. It will be especially<br>interesting to see what advantages the use of non mainstream dynamic<br>programming languages brings to the table in a domain that is<br>specifically targeted by Java and .NET frameworks. We also expect a
<br>heated discussion about the merits of the use of continuations in<br>Seaside and the lack thereof in the Fractal Framework. ;)<br><br>The schedule for this event, held on Monday 25th of April, is as<br>follows:<br><br>
- 15:00 - 16:00 Avi Bryant, Seaside<br>- 16:00 - 17:00 Marc Battyani, Fractal Framework<br>- 17:00 - 18:00 Open Podium Discussion<br><br>This event is rounded out with a little reception.<br><br>The venue for the event is the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Campus
<br>Etterbeek, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium. For a description of<br>how to get there see <a href="http://www.vub.ac.be/english/campEt.html">http://www.vub.ac.be/english/campEt.html</a><br><br>The exact location is still to be determined and will be announced at
<br>the following website:<br><a href="http://prog.vub.ac.be/events/2005/BADL/WebApplicationFrameworks.html">http://prog.vub.ac.be/events/2005/BADL/WebApplicationFrameworks.html</a><br><br>Please make sure to register for the event at the website, so we can
<br>plan ahead. The number of places will be limited according to the<br>exact location of the event, and will be announced at the website.<br><br>Below are the abstracts of the presentations and the biographies of<br>the speakers.
<br><br>Avi Bryant, Seaside<br>+++++++++++++++++++<br><br>On the web, abstraction is a dirty word. The dominant paradigms and<br>philosophies of web development -- CGI, Servlets, Server Pages, REST<br>-- provide only a thin wrapper around the low-level details of HTTP,
<br>and encourage you to use the rough stones of the transport protocol as<br>the direct building blocks of your application. Web developers by and<br>large reject any further abstraction in the way that assembly hackers
<br>once rejected structured programming: it's too inflexible, uses too<br>many resources, and above all, it doesn't let you see what's *really*<br>going on. As a result, web applications suffer the same problems now<br>
that assembly language programs did years ago; they're fragile,<br>verbose, difficult to maintain and ill-suited to reuse.<br><br>That's not to say that better abstractions aren't available. The Lisp<br>and Scheme communities have been working on them for years. Paul
<br>Graham's ViaWeb pioneered the use of closures, not query parameters,<br>to capture application state in each link. Christian Quiennec showed<br>how to use first class continuations to invert the flow of control of<br>
HTTP and put the server back in the driver's seat. Macro packages<br>like htmlgen bring HTML into the language itself, opening up much more<br>than a template system can provide. Meanwhile, object-oriented<br>packages like WebObjects have demonstrated how to decompose the web
<br>page into a tree of stateful, interacting objects, allowing a finer<br>granularity of development.<br><br>Seaside combines these ideas and others with the rich development<br>environment of Smalltalk to provide a stable, complete, and innovative
<br>web application platform. This talk will introduce Seaside, and will<br>focus in particular on the ways in which these abstractions can be<br>leveraged to enable reuse: how to use closures, continuations, and<br>intelligent HTML generation to destroy the intra- and inter-page
<br>coupling that is holding web development back.<br><br>Marc Battyani, Fractal Framework<br>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++<br><br>Web sites have evolved from static documents to simple applications<br>(eCommerce) and now to complete applications. Today, frameworks like
<br>J2EE and .Net are used for writing these applications made of tens to<br>hundreds of object classes. These huge frameworks suffer from the<br>limitations of their programming languages. Other frameworks, based on<br>continuations, are emerging but still have limitations for complex
<br>applications. The Framework presented here has been used in production<br>since 2001 and shows how the unique qualities of Common Lisp can boost<br>the productivity by more than an order of magnitude for writing web<br>
applications compared to J2EE/.Net. This framework automatically<br>generates the presentation, modification, validation, storage and data<br>integrity layers of all the object classes of an application. It<br>provides session management, web controls and a unique way for
<br>collaborative work. Internally, it makes extensive use of the Meta<br>Object Protocol, CLOS generic functions, lexical closures, and on the<br>fly code generation and compilation.<br><br>The speakers<br>++++++++++++<br>
<br>Avi Bryant is the co-founder of Smallthought Systems Inc. Much of his<br>work centers around the use of Squeak Smalltalk as a platform for<br>commercial software development. As an actively contributing member of<br>
the Squeak community, he maintains its standard version control<br>system, as well as packages for web development and relational and<br>object database access. As a consultant, he has helped companies<br>develop Squeak-based products for the travel, theatre, and finance
<br>industries, higher education, and mobile devices. Avi is based in<br>Vancouver, Canada but currently residing in The Netherlands.<br><br>Marc Battyani's professional activities involve electronics design and<br>writing software. He is the founder of Fractal Concept and the author
<br>of several open-source libraries (mod_lisp, cl-pdf, cl-typesetting).<br>He works on various domains ranging from medical or industrial systems<br>and applications to network infrastructure management web applications<br>
for banks as well as 3D software for robotized testing equipment, 6D<br>real time positioning systems for the industry and the military, smart<br>environmental radio sensors, etc. All the application software is<br>written in Common Lisp with Fractal Concept's web application
<br>framework. Marc has a MSc in electronics and a MSc in computer science.<br>He lives near Fontainebleau in France.<br><br>--<br>Roel Wuyts<br> DeComp<br><a href="mailto:roel.wuyts@ulb.ac.be">roel.wuyts@ulb.ac.be</a>
Université Libre de<br>Bruxelles<br><a href="http://homepages.ulb.ac.be/~rowuyts/">http://homepages.ulb.ac.be/~rowuyts/</a><br>Belgique<br>Vice-President of the European Smalltalk Users Group: <a href="http://www.esug.org">
www.esug.org</a><br><br></blockquote></div><br>