Here's some information on a couple of the talks coming up at Smalltalk Solutions this summer - register now!

Smalltalk Solutions 2005 will be here before you know it. Make sure you sign up early to take advantage of the savings. Visit www.smalltalksolutions.com to register. Please feel free to email me at jsj@ksc.com to be removed from this list. Thanks!

Here are a few samples of what you can expect from this year's show in Orlando.

Number Crunching Smalltalk

experience report

Poon, Dan: Romax Technology Ltd.

Monday 2 pm to 2:45 pm

Abstract: For over 10 years, Romax Technology Ltd. have pioneered the use of Smalltalk in Engineering Design and Analysis, a numerically intensive domain and traditionally the preserve of FORTRAN and more recently C and Matlab. Many vehicles on the roads today have benefited from Smalltalk analysis.

Smalltalk was initially used for product modelling and visualisation - its uses now includes number crunching where it performs along side FORTRAN.

Smalltalk's USP is that it is such a simple language that, when supported with pair programming between numerical analysts and Smalltalk coaches, it quickly becomes a lingua franca, enabling esoteric numerical algorithms and domain knowledge to be melded with production software skills.

Once captured in Smalltalk, a numerical model is much more malleable than its FORTRAN counterpart, meaning we can easy parameterise the model and apply optimisation techniques such as genetic algorithms.

We will also discuss the political implications of getting engineering analysts and computer scientists to work in pairs, the strong business case for doing so, and how our org chart has evolved with it.

Bio: 16 years of OO development experience from the early days of version 1.0 C++ to OODBMS. From the early attempts at OO methodologies to Agile. Worked within Telecommunications, Foreign Exchange Options Trading, and now Engineering Design Analysis.

Monticello

presentation

Putney, Colin: Quallaby

Tuesday 2 pm to 2:45 pm

Abstract: In the last 2 years Monticello has emerged as a viable tool for source code management and versioning of Squeak applications. Having accumulated some real world experience with Monticello, we've designed a next-generation versioning engine which will form the core of Monticello 2.0.

This talk will examine three hard problems in versioning software, and explore Monticello's unique approach to solving them. Along the way, we'll also see comparisons to other versioning systems, including Store, ENVY and Monticello

First is the "repeated merge" problem. This occurs when we have two (or more) parallel lines of development. Repeatedly merging code back and forth between the two lines can create artificial conflicts during merges, forcing developers to explicitly avoid conflicts as they work. A good versioning tool allows developers to save or merge their work at any time, and records enough history information to prevent spurious conflicts from arising.

The second problem is also one of spurious conflicts. Often, during a merge, we want to apply only some of the changes implied by the merge. But this "cherry picking" of changes introduces a risk that either spurious conflicts will be interoduced to future merges, or genuine conflicts will be missed. Again, the challenge for versioning tools is to record enough history information to allow developers to work naturally, while still doing merges accurately and automatically.

The final problem is so difficult that most versioning tools don't even attempt to solve it. Only Smalltalkers would demand to be able to update a running program with new code, including the kernel on which the versioning tool its self is running! Though still quite experimental, Monticello 2 attempts to solve the "brain autosurgery" problem as well.

Bio: Colin Putney is a software developer at Quallaby Corporation, writing on network monitoring software in VisualWorks Smalltalk. He the author of OmniBrowser and co-author of Monticello, both open source development tools for Squeak Smalltalk. Though he has been programming for many years, he began working in Smalltalk in 2002.