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SUMMARY:The Thorn Programming Language: Robust Distributed Scripting - Joh
 n Field (IBM Research)
DTSTART:20100315T124500Z
DTEND:20100315T140000Z
UID:TALK23597@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Sam Staton
DESCRIPTION:Scripting languages enjoy great popularity due to their suppor
 t for rapid and exploratory development. They typically have lightweight s
 yntax\, weak data privacy\, dynamic typing\, and powerful aggregate data t
 ypes. The price of these features comes later in the software life cycle. 
 Scripts are hard to evolve and compose\, and often slow. An additional wea
 kness of most scripting languages is lack of support for distributed compu
 ting -- though distribution is required for scalability and interacting wi
 th remote services. Thorn\, developed jointly by IBM Research and Purdue U
 niversity\, is a modern scripting language addressing these issues. It enj
 oys most of the advantages of scripting languages\, but provides support f
 or software evolution and robustification\, e.g.\, an expressive module sy
 stem and type annotation facilities. It has distributed computing built in
  the core language. This is joint work with Bard Bloom\, Brian Burg\, Nate
  Nystrom\, Johan Ostlund\, Gregor Richards\, Rok Strnisa\, Jan Vitek\, and
  Tobias Wrigstad.
LOCATION:Room FW26\, Computer Laboratory\, William Gates Building
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