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Two years and 3850 messages ago LtU was born.
I started LtU to help me in the design of a programming language course (based on EOPL2)
at the Open University of Israel.
I knew from the get go that I couldn't possibly manage such a weblog by myself.
I simply didn't have the time
nor the knowledge of all the different subfields of programming language research.
I wanted the weblog to reflect the variety of points of view and research questions, and I tried to
recruit contributing editors.
Without the help of Andrew Cooke -- who, by the way, originated the use of the acronym LtU -- and the help of Chris Rathman, LtU would never have gained momentum.
Today LtU has more than ten contributing editors and over 300 members. More than 100 page hits an hour are the norm,
and many well-known websites have links to LtU.
But numbers don't give the whole story. I feel we managed to create a small community,
where each member can give his perspective and engage in civil and professional discussion
with others. We didn't become another comp.lang.misc, where flames are the norm, and no real
learning takes place.
Quite a few members are actively pursuing research in highly specialized areas of programming
language research (such as semantics and algebraic methods). Thanks to them we are exposed to very
interesting techniques and research questions, often in the context of
real life design questions and examples. This mixture of theory and practice
gives LtU a unique quality.
Still, I kind of miss the old times, when we allowed ourselves to post less serious links,
if we thought they could be of interest. On occasion, we even allowed ourselves to discuss
things that weren't directly programming languages related.
Let me single out two other members. Oleg was kind enough to offer great summaries for various
conferences he attended. Behind the scenes he kept on sending me great links for posting on LtU.
I learned quite a few things from his always interesting contributions.
More recently Jon Fernquest showered us with great links.
It's nice that each member has a different focus, and is an expert on specific issues.
May I suggest, one more time, that we need more people to focus their attention on Logic/Declerative languages,
and the awfully quiet LC department?
Listen to me! I wanted to say how great you all made LtU become, and here I am complaining...
I just wanted to thank you all for helping create and run LtU. Many happy returns...
Posted to admin by Ehud Lamm on 7/28/02; 3:31:45 AM
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Happy birthday Dear Lambda
