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SUMMARY:Towards a dynamic object model within Unix processes - Stephen Kel
 l (University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20151023T130000Z
DTEND:20151023T140000Z
UID:TALK62164@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Raphael Proust
DESCRIPTION:\nProgrammers face much complexity from the co-existence of "n
 ative"\n(Unix-like) and [language] virtual machine (VM) "managed" run-time
 \nenvironments. Despite historical intentions\, language VMs have largely\
 nfailed to replace Unix processes. In this talk I'll explore an approach\n
 in which Unix processes instead "become VMs". This means evolving Unix's\n
 user-level services to subsume those of VMs\, in a highly compatible way.\
 nI'll describe a system\, liballocs\, whose design achieves this by\nexplo
 iting the existing (little-understood) rudiments of reflection and\nlate-b
 inding in modern Unix\, while addressing two recurring\nshortcomings: a la
 ck of semantic metadata ("type information") and the\ninability to bind fr
 om objects "back" to their metadata. I'll also\ndescribe some applications
  of liballocs: run-time type-checking\,\nFFI-less language interoperabilit
 y\, dynamically precise debugging\, and\nprogrammer-friendly disk I/O.
LOCATION:GS15
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