Simula and Java - two of a kind

javaBin ønsker alle velkommen til en julespesial! 2020 har ikke vært lett og store deler av året har mange av oss jobbet fra hjemmekontor. Som en takk til alle som har stått på gjennom hele året, avslutter vi året med en meetup med en veldig spesiell gjest. Nemlig Øystein Myhre Andersen, en av utviklerne av det første objekt orienterte språket Simula. Meetupen blir en lengere versjon av Øystein sin lyntale fra JavaZone 2019.

Meetupen streames live kl. 18.00, førstkommende tirsdag den 8. desember. Meetupen blir holdt på norsk og streamen kan følges live fra: https://java.no/online

PS: This meetup will be held in Norwegian.

Abstract:
The 50th anniversary of Simula, the first object-oriented programming language, was held at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo on 27th September, 2017. James Gosling, the inventor of Java, gave overwhelming credit to the legacy of Simula in his lecture. He mentioned that a number of programming languages nowadays
compile to JVM. During his lecture, I began to wonder - why has no team made a simula implementation in java, written in java that compiles to java / java virtual machine(JVM). Inspired by the lectures on the Simula Jubilee, I began to ask myself if I should try to make a Simula implementation using today's tools. It should certainly be a Recursive
Descent parser followed by traditionally checker and a code generator.

Most of the code generator was rather straitforeward except a few points: Quasi-paralell Sequencing and Simula's old fashion goto-statement.

I will explain how the new concept of delemitted continuations can be used to implement coroutines and QPS, and, if we have time for it, how Java's exception handling together with byte code egineering can be used to re-introduce goto in the Java Language. An open source project was established creating a full-fledged Simula Implementation
strictly after 'Simula Standard'. See: https://portablesimula.github.io/github.io/

Bio:
Veteran Software Developer, born may 1946. I started as a young student at Norwegian Computing Center in 1967. Worked in Simula implementation teams on various platforms from the very beginning. I had a central role in designing the Portable Simula System in the 70's.