February 2024 - Esug-list - lists.esug.org

UKSTUG Meeting 28 February 2024: Juan Vuletich - Bootstrap & Dynamic Cuis Libraries

by Giovanni Corriga

Juan Vuletich returns to the UKSTUG to discuss some recent enhancements to Cuis Smalltalk ( https://cuis.st/ ) : Bootstrap and Dynamic Cuis Libraries. Bootstrap: Creating Minimal Images from Scratch > * The last ancestor of Cuis Smalltalk that was bootstrapped from scratch was Smalltalk-76. Since then, various released images of Smalltalk-80, Squeak and Cuis were derived by applying updates to the previous one. A new tool called 'Bootstrap' allows the creation of minimal Smalltalk images from scratch. These images are in the Spur 32 and 64-bit formats, compatible with the OpenSmalltalk VM. 'Bootstrap' gives developers complete control over what is included in the new image. It is compact, relatively simple, and easy to extend and adapt. Dynamic Cuis Libraries: A binary format for Cuis code that is powerful and quick to load > * Dynamic Cuis Libraries are binary files with pre-compiled code that can be loaded into a running Cuis image. They can add new classes and extend existing ones. For existing classes, there are no requirements on the shape of that class in the image loading the library. Missing variables are added, extra variables are kept, and both existing and newly loaded methods are adjusted to whatever shape the class has. Juan Vuletich ( https://independent.academia.edu/JuanVuletich ) is the founder and lead developer of Cuis Smalltalk. He is a long-standing Open Source Smalltalk community member, having contributed kernel code to Cuis, Squeak and the Squeak VM for over 25 years. Juan has been programming since he was 14, and doing it professionally since he was 17. He holds an MS.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Buenos Aires. He works at LabWare. This will be an online meeting from home. If you'd like to join us, please sign up in advance on the meeting's Meetup page ( https://www.meetup.com/ukstug/events/299084123/ ) to receive the meeting details. Don’t forget to bring your laptop and drinks!

Feb. 23, 2024

CfP: Onward! Papers @ SPLASH 2024

by Jonathan Edwards

Onward! is a premier multidisciplinary conference focused on everything to do with programming and software: including processes, methods, languages, communities and applications. Onward! is more radical, more visionary and more open than other conferences to ideas that are well-argued but not yet proven. We welcome different ways of thinking about, approaching and reporting on programming language and software engineering research. The Character of Onward! Papers Onward! Papers is looking for grand visions and new paradigms that could make a big difference in how we will one day build software. But it is not looking for research-as-usual papers—conferences like OOPSLA are the place for that. Those conferences require rigorous validation such as theorems or empirical experiments, which are necessary for scientific progress, but which typically preclude discussion of early-stage ideas. Onward! papers must also supply some degree of validation because mere speculation is not a good basis for progress. However, Onward! accepts less rigorous methods of validation such as compelling arguments, exploratory implementations, and substantial examples. The use of worked-out examples to support new ideas is strongly encouraged. Submission deadline is April 25. For further details please see the full CfP <https://2024.splashcon.org/track/splash-2024-Onward-papers#Call-for-Papers>. We welcome submissions from independent researchers, for whom we have a special invitation: to the crazy ones <https://alarmingdevelopment.org/?p=1708>.

Feb. 18, 2024

Call for presentation @ ESUG 2024

by stephane ducasse

Dear friends Please distribute the following call ESUG 2024 Call for Presentations from 8 to 11 July 2024 Lille France https://esug.github.io https://esug.github.io/2024-Conference/conf2024.html You can support the ESUG conference in many different ways: - Sponsor the conference. New sponsoring packages are described at http://www.esug.org/supportesug/becomeasponsor/ - Submit a talk, software to the award competition, or a paper to IWST http://https://esug.github.io/2024-Conference/IWST2024.html - Attend the conference. We'd like to beat the previous record of attendance (180 people at Koln 2019)! - Students can get free registration and hosting if they enroll in the the Student Volunteers program. See below. ## Developers Forum: International Smalltalk Developers Conference We are looking for YOUR experience on using Smalltalk. You will have 30 min for presentations and 45 min for hands-on tutorials. The list of topics for the normal talks and tutorials includes, but is not limited to the following: - XP practices, Development tools, Experience reports - Model-driven development, Web development, Team management - Meta-Modeling, Security, New libraries & frameworks - Educational material, Embedded systems and robotics - SOA and Web services, Interaction with other programming languages - Teaching Pearls and Show us Your Business We added two types of sessions in addition to the regular talks and ''Show us your project'' sessions. - Show your business in a 10-minute session (Get prepared!!) - Teaching pearls: we want some sessions on how to teach some design aspects. We want your tip and tricks to teach Smalltalk or OOP. We expect to have several 10 to 15-minute sessions aggregated. ### How to submit? Make a Pull Request here https://github.com/ESUG/esug.github.io/tree/source/2024-Conference/talks [Or but only if you are not connected to the world… send an email to stephane.ducasse(a)inria.fr] Title: [ESUG 2024] Please follow the template below the email will be automatically processed! Name: Email: Abstract: Bio: ## Call for Student Volunteers Student volunteers help keep the conference running smoothly; in return, they have free accommodations, while still having most of the time to enjoy the conference. Pay attention: the places are limited so do not wait till the last minute to apply. Conference details: Send an email to Steven Costiou <steven.costiou at inria.fr> and Oleksandr Zaitsev <olk.zaytsev at gmail.com> with: title: [ESUG 2024 Student] name, gender, university/school, country, email address short description of you and why you are interested in participating For which period is accommodation covered? Accommodation is covered from Sunday from 8 to 11 July 2024 (including nights from Sunday to Monday and from Wednesday to Thursday ). Students will be hosted in student rooms. ESUG additionally covers the lunches during the week and one dinner. Duties include handling registration as people arrive at the conference, filling coffee machines, collecting presentation slides for ESUG right after the presentation is given, being present at an information desk to answer questions, and generally being helpful. Student volunteering makes the conference better, takes a fairly small amount of time, and doesn't significantly interfere with enjoying and learning from the conference. Please note, that this role requires discipline and constant attention to all attendees. Information about hotel Student Volunteer rooms are booked at (to be announced). If you are a student volunteer, do not book yourself, we have arranged the booking already!

Feb. 13, 2024

Open PhD position on debugging at Inria Lille

by Steven Costiou

Hello, we have a PhD position opening at Lille, France. See all details here: https://recrutement.inria.fr/public/classic/fr/offres/2024-07154 Steven./ / /Summary of the research proposal:/ /### Application development inevitably introduces bugs. Often, it's not clear why a code change introduced a bug. To find this cause-and-effect relationship and debug more efficiently, developers can sometimes rely on the existence of a previous version of the code without the bug. Yet, traditional debugging tools are not designed for this kind of work, making it a tedious operation. In this thesis, we propose an approach that enables us to understand and to debug an application in a *live system*, such as Pharo or Python, by comparing two executions with different results: one execution succeeds and the other fails. Based on this hypothesis, we propose in this thesis to answer the following challenges: - How to detect divergence, i.e. different behavior between two executions of a program? - How can we reduce the cost in time, memory and energy consumption of detecting divergence(s) on long executions? - What are the criteria for deciding whether a divergence is normal or unauthorized? - What about detecting multiple divergences in the same program? - What abstractions are needed to compare two executions of a program and detect divergences? To meet these challenges, in addition to a precise state-of-the-art on debugging techniques, the PhD student will study concrete cases of program execution and propose a tool to be integrated into Pharo. /

Feb. 8, 2024

LAMRC in india is looking for Smalltalkers :)

by stephane ducasse

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7158809929460400129/?o… Stéphane Ducasse http://stephane.ducasse.free.fr 06 30 93 66 73 "If you knew today was your last day on earth, what would you do differently? ....ESPECIALLY if, by doing something different, today might not be your last day on earth.” Calvin & Hobbes

Feb. 6, 2024

News from IWST...

by Gordana Rakic

Dear all, while preparing the IWST call for this year let us share the update on the IWST 2023: The proceedings is published dat the https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3627/ Let us make the next IWST even greater! We will be back to you with the new call asap. IWST team.

Feb. 6, 2024

Open Call: Object-Centric Breakpoints experiment

by Steven Costiou

Dear Community, as part of a research project in the EVREF team, we are looking for people to participate to an empirical experiment on object-centric breakpoints - a debugging tool present in Pharo 9. Many people from the community already participated, and we thank them very much :) We are still looking for participants, we need 40 people to do the experiment! Please help us, in return it helps us understand better our tools and their impact and therefore build better tools for the Pharo community! For those who want to know a bit more, see my original email below. For those who just want to jump at the experiment, you can go there https://github.com/Pharo-XP-Tools/XPImageGeneration/tree/exp-ocd Thanks in advance :) Steven. --- We would like to invite you to participate to our experimental study on Object-Centric Breakpoints. This study aims to evaluate and to understand how Object-Centric Breakpoints impacts the debugging activity. This experiment takes place in **Pharo 9**. In this experiment, we ask you to solve 2 debugging tasks, one with standard Pharo tools and one other with Object-Centric Breakpoints. Between the two tasks, you will have to follow a tutorialand warmup tasks to learn how to use the tool. **How to Participate:** All instructions are here, please read them carefully: https://github.com/Pharo-XP-Tools/XPImageGeneration/tree/exp-ocd **About the Experiment:** The experiment last between 40 minutes and 2 hours. Participants should have experience with Pharo development and debugging. We recommend having more than 6 months experience in Pharo and debugging in general. You will gain insights into the Object-Centric Breakpoints approach and contribute to advancements in debugging research. Help us to build better debugging tools that help you debug! **Some constraints:** - You are not allowed to load external tools and baselines, but you can use anything that is in the base image - Please do the experiment in one shot if possible without interruptions - The experiment sends anonymous data to our inria server, please make sure that you have a valid internet connection - Please try to use the object-centric breakpoints when the experimental framework asks you to **Notes:** Participation is voluntary, and everything is anonymous. You can abandon the experiment at any point (and your data will be discarded). For any question, you can contact us: steven.costiou(a)inria.fr and valentin.bourcier(a)inria.fr Thank you for considering participating in our study. Your contribution will be valuable in advancing the field of debugging and helping us understand what tools we need to build for Pharo. Sincerely, Steven and Valentin, EVREF team, Inria

Feb. 2, 2024