The Brave New World of Full Service Computing

May 26, 2010
Gilad Bracha | Newspeak

For the past generation, the world of personal computing has been a world of self-service computing. The person using/owning a personal/self service computer is responsible for managing that computer themselves. All the digital chores – installing and updating software, preventing malware infection, backing up storage etc. are the user’s responsibility.

Today we are at an inflection point, as we transition to the world of full service computing. Network based services are positioned to take over the responsibilities of digital housekeeping. This transition carries both risks and opportunities in platform design, programming language design and development methodologies. We focus on the opportunities using the notion of objects as software services, being developed in the context of the Newspeak programming language.

Speaker Details

Gilad Bracha is the creator of the Newspeak programming language. Previously, he was a Distinguished Engineer at Cadence, and a Computational Theologist and Distinguished Engineer at Sun. He is co-author of the Java Language Specification, and a researcher in the area of object-oriented programming languages. Prior to joining Sun, he worked on Strongtalk, the Animorphic Smalltalk System. He received his B.Sc in Mathematics and Computer Science from Ben Gurion University in Israel and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Utah.