Vancouver Lisp Users Group meeting for August - Web Continuations Considered Harmful
Tuesday, August 8, 2006
Summer is drawing to a close, so it's time to turn our attentions to
something other than surf, sand, and Beach Boys songs! The next two
lispvan meetings will have a
continuations on the web focus. In August, Marc Battyani will
be arguing against the use of continuations in web
applications. Given that a number of lispvan members feel very strongly that they
are a "good idea", this meeting promises to be an interesting one!
Then, in
September, James Wright will be discussing the use of a lisp-based
program transformer to provide continuations
in Javascript for asynchronous operations in the browser (Note:
Chris Double has written a
number of posts about continuations and asynchronous operations
in Javascript that are well worth reading).
Here's the "official" meeting notice:
Topic: Web Continuations Considered Harmful
Presenter: Marc Battyani
Date: Thursday, August 17, 2006
Time: 7pm - 10pm (or whenever)
Venue:
Think!, 4512 West 10th Ave., Vancouver (see
map)
Summary: Marc Battyani is well known in Lisp circles for a
number of reasons:
- He does Lisp development work full-time.
- He has written his own CL web framework (which he hasn't released) as well as the popular mod_lisp Apache module for passing HTTP requests from Apache to a Lisp server.
- He developed CL-PDF and CL-TYPESETTING - two popular CL packages for working with documents in CL.
- When Reddit moved from CL to Python, Marc created a Reddit-clone in Lisp (in fact, he started a trend!). From this, the Common Lisp Directory project evolved.
- Lisp at work: Marc and his wife Anne have their own Lisp-based business called Fractal Concept that specializes in the development of custom circuit boards and electronic devices for industry as well as custom applications in Lisp. He will be providing an overview of what his business does and how he manages to differentiate his offering and stay competitive using Lisp. This will provide an interesting insight for anyone who has ever dreamed about running their own lisp-based business!
- Web Continuations Considered Harmful: Actually, this is my title (one of the "perks" of being the one who writes up the meeting notices!) rather than Marc's, so don't send him any hate mail! ;-) But Marc does feel that continuations are not a "good idea" for web application frameworks and will explain in this session why he thinks other approaches are much better. I'm sure there will be some "frank and meaningful" discussions following the presentation as well! ;-)
