Lambda the Ultimate

An introductory overview article about static analysis tools and how they can be used to improve software security. The article talks a bit about the history of Cigital's ITS4 tool.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

INTERNATIONAL LISP CONFERENCE 2009

Lisp: The Next 50 Years

http://www.international-lisp-conference.org

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
March 22-25, 2009

Sponsored by the Association of Lisp Users

General Information:

The Association of Lisp Users is pleased to announce the 2009
International Lisp Conference will be held in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sunday
through Wednesday, March 22-25, 2009. The emphasis will be on present
and future applications of technologies that have been or might soon
be associated with the Lisp programming language and/or related
languages and software.

We encourage submissions in diverse areas, including but not limited
to: language design and implementation, memory management, software
engineering, mathematical and scientific computing, artificial
intelligence, database processing and data mining, business
intelligence, performance analysis, parallel processing, quantum
computing, bioinformatics, telecommunications and networking, the
semantic web, music, domain-specific languages, and entertainment
technologies. ILC09 is not limited to topics discussed in previous
symposia. Authors concerned about the appropriateness of a topic may
communicate by electronic mail with the program chair prior to
submission.

Explaining a known idea in a new way may make as strong a contribution
as inventing a new one. We encourage the submission of "pearls":
elegant essays that illustrate an idea, for example by developing a
short program. (A pearl should be concise, instructive,
self-contained, and entertaining. Your pearl is likely to be rejected
if your readers get bored, if the material gets too complicated, if
too much specialized knowledge is needed, or if the writing is
inelegant. The key to writing a good pearl is polishing.)

There is no formal separation of categories and no need to explicitly
label pearls as such: all papers, whether pearl or otherwise, will be
judged on a combination of correctness, significance, novelty,
clarity, and elegance. Each paper should explain its contributions in
both general and technical terms, identifying what has been
accomplished, explaining why it is significant, and comparing it with
previous work. Authors should strive to make their papers
understandable to a broad audience.

Alongside our usual four-day program of tutorials, prominent invited
speakers, and excellent technical sessions, this year we will also
consider demonstration sessions.

The official language of the conference is English. Further details
are available at the conference web site:
http://www.international-lisp-conference.org

Technical Program:

Original submissions in all areas related to the conference themes are
invited for the following categories.

Papers: Technical papers of up to 15 pages that describe original
results ("research papers") or explain known ideas in new ways
("pearls").

Demonstrations: Abstracts of up to 4 pages for demonstrations of
tools, libraries, and applications.

Tutorials: Abstracts of up to 4 pages for in-depth presentations about
topics of special interest for at least 90 minutes and up to 180
minutes.

Panel discussions: Abstracts of up to 4 pages for discussions about
current themes. Panel discussion proposals must mention panel members
who are willing to partake in a discussion.

Lightning talks: Abstracts of up to one page for talks to last
for no more than 5 minutes.

Important Dates:

Please send contributions before the submission deadline to the
program committee (ilc09-program-committee at alu.org).

Deadline for submissions: December 9, 2009
Notification of acceptance or rejection: January 9, 2009
Deadline for final paper submissions: February 9, 2009

Organizing Committee:

Conference Chair: Daniel Weinreb (ITA Software)
General correspondence: ilc09-organizing-committee at alu.org
Program Chair: Guy L. Steele Jr. (Sun Microsystems Laboratories)
Contact: ilc09-program-committee at alu.org
Local chair: Howard Shrobe (MIT)

Technical Program Committee: to be announced soon

Factor: an extensible interactive language, Google Tech Talk by Slava Pestov.

Factor is a general-purpose programming language which has been in development for a little over five years and is influenced by Forth, Lisp, and Smalltalk. Factor takes the best ideas from Forth -- simplicity, succinct code, emphasis on interactive testing, meta-programming -- and brings modern high-level language features such as garbage collection, object orientation, and functional programming familiar to users of languages such as Python and JavaScript. Recognizing that no programming language is an island, Factor is portable, ships with a full-featured standard library, deploys stand-alone binaries, and interoperates with C and Objective-C.

In this talk, I will give the rationale for Factor's creation, present an overview of the language, and show how Factor can be used to solve real-world problems with a minimum of fuss. At the same time, I will emphasize Factor's extensible syntax, meta-programming and reflection capabilities, and show that these features, which are unheard of in the world of mainstream programming languages, make programs easier to write, more robust, and fun.