Panels
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What is Language Technology in Our Time?
Presentations: Tullio Vardanega | Bertrand Meyer | Franco Gasperoni | Erhard Ploedereder | José María Martínez
Moderator: Tullio Vardanega (University of Padua)
Panelists: Bertrand Meyer (Chief Architect of Eiffel Software); Franco Gasperoni (co-founder of AdaCore); Erhard Ploedereder (educator and researcher in software engineering); José María Martínez (Software Engineering Manager at Cassidian)
(Tuesday, June 12th, 14:30 - 16:00, Wallenbergaren room)
For a language that had its trademark in safety and robustness, discipline and control, in the last 20 years, Ada has steadily extended its wealth of features and capabilities to a considerable extent, yet within the bounds of its original mission. However, perhaps because the industrial systems written in Ada are unlike to evolve just to catch up on new features, the pace of advancement in the Ada language risks being faster than that of the users. Traditional education and training – though obviously useful and even necessary – is not going to bridge the gap, because Ada is often not in the software engineering curriculum and the industrial economics leave little room for training. Arguably, it should be the language to reach out to prospective users, more than the reverse. But this may need more than a programming language in the traditional sense of the classic tuple. It may be libraries, patterns, frameworks, tutorials, and many other elements that one way or another seem to belong in the general concern of language technology in our time, and make the fortune of far less solid languages.
Prompted by these considerations, in this panel we ask ourselves the following questions:
- What is “language technology” in our time?
- Has the view changed over time? If so, what were the drivers of the change?
- How should Ada respond to those changes?
- Does the response depend on the application domain or is it independent of it? In what way should Ada learn from the outside?
Reliable Software, a Perspective from Industry
Presentations: Jørgen Bundgaard | Ana Rodríguez | Steen Palm | Rick Sward
Moderator: Jørgen Bundgaard (Ada in Denmark)
Panelists: Ana Rodríguez (GMV); Steen Palm (Terma A/S); Rick Sward (MITRE)
(Wednesday, June 13th, 14:30 - 16:00, Wallenbergaren room)
The invited panelists will discuss what they see as the most pressing and challenging industrial needs in the way of software technology to facilitate the production of reliable software, such as:
- Quality and safety standards
- Life-cycle models
- Processes, methods, techniques
- Languages and tools