Informatics Seminar on Wednesday, March 25th, 15.30 - Judith Bishop

The Faculty of Informatics is pleased to announce a seminar given by Judith Bishop 

TITLE: Programming Languages meet Design Patterns: Narrowing the Abstraction Gap

SPEAKER: Judith Bishop, University of Pretoria, currently visiting Politecnico di Milano

DATE: Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

PLACE: USI Università della Svizzera italiana, room SI-006, Informatics building (Via G. Buffi 13)

TIME: 15.30

ABSTRACT:

Design patterns are elegant, accepted and proven ways to tackle common programming problems and one of the key mechanisms for implementing

reliable and maintainable software. This talk explores where they fit in in the software "food chain". In particular, I will examine how advances

in language design can narrow the gap for implementing design patterns in terms of readability, writability, maintainability and traceability.

My new solutions fully incorporate C# 3.0's modern object-oriented features such as delegates, generics, LINQ and reflection, not all of

which are part of well-known languages like Java. I will highlight the challenges that face design pattern implementation, in particular

efficiency, and examine the promise of reusable design patterns. The talk looks ahead at the new features of C# 4.0 and the new Dynamic

Language Runtime with its ability which promote dynamism in programming and interoperability with languages like IronPython and how these too

will affect the way we implement design patterns in the future.

BIO:

Judith Bishop is a professor of computer science at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, a position she has held since 1992. Prior to

that she was a professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and a Reader at the University of Southampton. Judith Bishop's expertise is

in programming languages and distributed systems, with a strong practical bias and an interest in compilers and design patterns, as

well as parallel and grid computing. After having contributed to the fields of compilers, computer architecture and configuration

description languages, she now works on the principles of adaptive software in a multi-lingual and mobile environment, in collaboration

local companies and collaborators in Germany and Italy. She has 90 publications including 15 books on programming that are available in

six languages and read worldwide. Her latest book is "C# 3.0 Design Patterns" with O'Reilly (2008).

Judith Bishop is a visible South African presence abroad, on international editorial, programme and award committees, and serves

the community locally by organizing conferences and Summer Schools in South Africa aimed at keeping postgraduates involved in cutting edge

research.She has received numerous awards and distinctions, in particular the IFIP Silver Core Award 2006 for service to the worldwide computer

science community, the DTI Award for Distinguished Woman Scientist of the Year for Innovation 2005 and one of 100 Leading Mind Awards in the

university's Centenary Year 2008. In 2006, she was Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of South Africa. In 2008, she was nominated as a UP

Leading Mind in the university's Centenary Year, and was awarded the South African Computer Society's Fellowship Award.

HOST: Prof. Cesare Pautasso