BCTCS ’09 was held at Warwick University- the university that I studied for my undergraduate degree at. I enjoyed the conference particularly, as I got to spend time with Steve Matthews and Sara Kalvala (my undergraduate project supervisors from my 3rd and 4th years), old friends from my undergraduate days, new friends from other universities, and also Bill Wadge, co-creator of Lucid, who was invited to speak at BCTCS ’09 all the way from Victoria, Canada.
If you have ever had a conversation with me about computer science you will know I have a particular proclivity for the Lucid programming language, so getting to chat about all things Lucid for a few days was great fun. Bill supervised Steve back when Bill was at Warwick, in the early days of Lucid. The quip is that Bill is my grandsupervisor.
The Lucian language is my own object-oriented hybrid of Lucid. I started Lucian as my 3rd year project and dissertation- quite some time ago now. The ideas developed further after discussions with Bill back in 2007, resulting in Steve and I publishing a paper which came out in 2008. In January 2009, with the BCTCS looming, I thought it would be fitting to talk about Lucian at BCTCS, due to Bill and Steve being present, and BCTCS being held at Warwick, the crucible of Lucid’s youth. So I revisited Lucian and discovered that there was much more to say than was originally conveyed in the paper. I mulled Lucian over last term and have since revised the language and have had some further thoughts about its semantics.
...never odd or even... 