λondon HUG

Jeremy Gibbons: Design Patterns as Higher-Order Datatype-Generic Programs

It’s meeting time again! The next meeting of the HUG will be on 14th November from 6:30PM at City University. Dr Jeremy Gibbons from the Oxford University Computing Laboratory will be giving a talk entitled Design Patterns as Higher-Order Datatype-Generic Programs. Here is the abstract:

Design patterns are reusable abstractions in object-oriented software. However, using current programming languages, these elements can only be expressed extra-linguistically: as prose, pictures, and prototypes. We believe that this is not inherent in the patterns themselves, but evidence of a lack of expressivity in the languages of today. We expect that, in the languages of the future, the code part of design patterns will be expressible as reusable library components. Indeed, we claim that the languages of tomorrow will suffice; the future is not far away. The necessary features are higher-order and datatype-generic constructs; these features are already or nearly available now. We argue the case by presenting higher-order datatype-generic programs capturing Origami, a small suite of patterns for recursive data structures.

See the venue page for details of how to get there. No specific room number has been allocated yet, so look out for signs or other recognisable Haskellers when you get there.