Lessons from building language runtimes and environments

Abstract

Dave Thomas will share his decades of experience building industrial programming language runtimes and environments. He and his colleagues created environments for embedded systems such as Forth, OOC, OTI Smalltalk, Scheme and Java, for enterprise applications such as Honeywell Pascal, IBM VisualAge/Smalltalk, Java and Eclipse, and for data-intensive IoT and cyber-analytics with the Kx Analyst workbench. The languages span procedural, OO, functional and array languages. He has collaborated with implementers of V8 JavaScript, Dart, Toit, WASM, Erlang, APL, and k. Dave with provide us a look “under the hood” at the design and implementation choices as well as the practices used in the “language engine room”. He will explain how different languages deal with execution, garbage collection, libraries and IDEs illustrating their similarities and differences.

Bio

Dave Thomas's breadth of business experience

Dave Thomas has a wide spectrum of experience in the software industry as an executive, investor, board member, consultant, architect, and engineer. He is Chairman of Bedarra Corp, which provides consulting on technology and business strategy for emerging technology, products and services. Bedarra provides virtual CTOs, as well as directors, advisors and mentors to support new initiatives. Dave served as Chief Scientist/CSO of Kx Systems, First Derivatives Plc. He co-founded Bedarra Research Labs, creators of the Ivy visual analytics workbench. Dave is the founder of YOW! Conferences and Workshops. He was Managing Director of Object Mentor, a company specializing in the training and deployment of Agile and Object-Oriented Software Development methodologies.

Proven track record of success

Dave has repeatedly demonstrated how to deliver quality software on time and on budget. He is best known as the founder and past CEO of Object Technology International Inc. (formerly OTI, now IBM OTI Labs) where he led the commercial introduction of object and component technology. The company is often cited as the ideal model of a software technology company and was a pioneer in Agile Product Development with a process called Just-In-Time Software. Throughout his career, he has worked with major global corporations as well as startups on business and technical strategy, development organization and process, as well as competitive analysis and strategy.

Visionary thinker

Dave has a unique ability to translate research breakthroughs into competitive products. He has been a pioneer in the development of embedded systems, object-oriented technology and functional programming. He was the principal visionary and architect for IBM VisualAge Smalltalk and Java tools and virtual machines including the popular open-source, multi-language Eclipse.org IDE. OTI pioneered the use of virtual machines in embedded systems with Tektronix shipping the first commercial products in 1988. He was instrumental in establishing IBM's Pervasive Computing efforts.

Industry-recognized expert

He is a popular, humorous, albeit opinionated keynote speaker with a unique breadth of business experience and technical depth. He is widely published in software engineering literature. Dave remains active in various roles within the technical community including YOW, ECOOP, AOSD, JAOO, Agile Development Conference, OOPSLA Onward, ENASE and Dynamic Language Symposium. He is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University and the Queensland University of Technology as well as a founding director of the Agile Alliance, an ACM Distinguished Engineer, past President of AITO and IEEE Software Advisory Board.