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The Importance of Being Eelco

Authors Andrew P. Black , Kim B. Bruce , James Noble

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OASIcs.EVCS.2023.4.pdf
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Author Details

Andrew P. Black
  • Portland State University, OR, USA
  • https://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~black/
Kim B. Bruce
  • Pomona College, Claremont, CA, USA
  • https://cs.pomona.edu/~kim/
James Noble
  • Creative Research & Programing, Wellington, NZ
  • http:ecs.vuw.ac.nz/~kjx/

Funding

  • Noble, James: This work is supported in part by the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi Marsden Fund Te Pūtea Rangahau a Marsden, Amazon Web Services, and Agoric.

Cite As Get BibTex

Andrew P. Black, Kim B. Bruce, and James Noble. The Importance of Being Eelco. In Eelco Visser Commemorative Symposium (EVCS 2023). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 109, pp. 4:1-4:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023) https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.EVCS.2023.4

Abstract

Programming language designers and implementers are taught that: 
semantics are more worthwhile than syntax, that programs exist to embody proofs, rather than to get work done, and to value Dijkstra more than Van Wijngaarden. 
Eelco Visser believed that, while there is value in the items on the left, there is at least as much value in the items on the right. This short paper explores how Eelco Visser embodied these values, and how he encouraged our work on the Grace programming language, supported that work withio Spoofax, and provided a venue for discussion within the WG2.16 Programming Language Design working group.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Software and its engineering → Syntax
  • Software and its engineering → Semantics
  • Software and its engineering → Object oriented languages
  • Software and its engineering → Translator writing systems and compiler generators
Keywords
  • Eelco Visser
  • Grace
  • Spoofax
  • syntax

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