It's hard to believe that OOPSLA, the ACM's "Object-Oriented Programming Systems, Languages and Applications" conference, is ten years old. Still harder to believe is that 30 attendees at this year's roundup in Austin, Texas had attended every session since the beginning, leading conference-chair Rebecca Wirfs-Brock to suggest that these individuals have entered the realm of "persistent objects."
More than 3000 people from around the world showed up at OOPSLA '95. According to Wirfs-Brock, about half were programmers, another 50 or so were academicians, and another 300 were managers "trying to figure out what programmers do."
All of these people heard a variety of presentations, many of which focused on patterns and object-oriented software design. Dr. Dobb's Sourcebook columnist Richard Helm, for instance, presented a Thursday morning session on "Patterns in Practice," which was followed by related talks, such as "Interactive Visualization of Design Patterns Can Help in Framework Understanding" (Danny Lange and Yuichi Nakamura), "A Framework for Network Protocol Software" (Hermann Huni, Ralph Johnson, Robert Engel), and "Creating the Architecture of a Manufacturing Framework by Design Patterns" (Hans Albrecht Schmid). A panel discussion entitled "Patterns: Cult to Culture" was led by Steven Fraser, and included Grady Booch, Frank Buschmann, Jim Coplien, Norm Kerth, Ivar Jacobson, and Mary Beth
Rosson.
Even though the conference seemed heavy on Smalltalk (including invited speeches by noted Smalltalkers David Thomas and Adele Goldberg) and, to a lesser degree, Eiffel (with Bertrand Meyer), C++ still managed to squeeze its way into the conference. After all, what would an object-oriented conference be without a speech by Bjarne Stroustrup, in this case about "Why C++ Is Not Just An Object-Oriented Programming Language." Likewise, Alexander Stepanov presented a paper on generic programming and the Standard Template Library.
From David Farber's talk on "The Future of Distributed Systems" to poster sessions on distributed algorithms and workshops on interoperable objects, distributed computing was clearly a focus at OOPSLA '95. With the convergence of communications and computing, "the new world order is that of the network," said Farber. In this world, he went on to say, computers are nothing more than engines embedded into the network. This brought Farber to the topic of security, another theme that speaker after speaker returned to. The consensus was clear: What's needed are trusted objects that can safely be transported over the nets.
Of course, it would be difficult to attend any gathering these days without seeing something about the Internet and World Wide Web. At OOPSLA '95, these topics were specifically addressed in Birds of a Feather sessions such as "Object Scripts and the Web," "Objects and the Web," and "OO in Telecommunications and Telephony."
If you didn't know at the outset that you were attending an object-oriented conference, you would by the time you completed a quick tour of the exhibit floor. Those giving away candy bars and T-shirts included Object Design, Object Intelligence, Object International, Object People, ObjecTime, Objectory, Objectshare, Objectsoft, ObjectSpace, and the like. Surprisingly, familiar PC software vendors were absent, as Microsoft, Borland, Symantec, and other C++ proponents decided to bypass a chance to confer face-to-face with hundreds of programmers. Companies commanding the biggest presence included Smalltalk vendor ParcPlace-Digitalk and GemStone, along with Franz, Micro Focus, ILOG, and Intersolv.
DDJ
