🚀 go-pugleaf

	   ACM Greater Boston Chapter SICPLAN

		Thursday, November 12, 1992
			8 P.M.

		Intermetrics Atrium
		733 Concord Ave., Cambridge


    A Talk on Functional Programming by Jules Gilbert


Jules  Gilbert  owns SymbTech, a small software  R&D  firm.   Mr. 
Gilbert has been a self-employed programmer and software research 
related  entrepreneur  doing business in the  Boston  area  since 
1972.  
       
This discussion introduces functional programming.
Functional  programming technology is based on the lambda  calcu-
lus,  an important programming primitive not available with  con-
ventional programming languages in popular use today.

Application areas for functionally-based programs should be quite 
numerous.  This talk relates primarily to deriving and manipulat-
ing source materials written in the C programming language.  

A specific SymbTech product which provides functional programming 
resources  with respect to C will be discussed.  This product  is 
known  as  the C/Apprentice and provides two  types  of  software 
engineering resources:

A)   Deriving  new  source.  Constructing  source  requires  the 
     existence of a formal model of the target programming language, 
     and  a  semantic methods model.  Examples of methods  based  on 
     parameterized data typing will be discussed.

B)   Maintaining  existing source.  Making changes  to  existing 
     source  also  involves the aforementioned (A)  components,  and 
     additionally, a simple tool for converting existing C source to 
     a suitable format for subsequent functional manipulation.  

(Discussion  will focus primarily on deriving new source  from  a 
 high level conceptual model of the intended program,  and not  on
 maintenance).

ACM Greater Boston Chapter SIGPLAN

Dear Colleage,

Jules Gilbert will give us a presentation of some new ways
of using functional programming approaches to compiler and application
development as our November talk.  This will give us an opportunity to
hear about some new commercial applications of functional programming
as well as to participate in a lively discussion and give some feedback
to a commercial developer.
 
We will be meeting for dinner at Joyce Chen's restaurant, 390 Rindge
Ave., Cambridge at 6:00 p.m. before the meeting.  If you wish to come,
please call "Sigplan dinner" at Intermetrics (661-1840) as early as
possible so we can make the appropriate dinner reservation.

Peter Mager
Chairperson, Greater Boston SIGPLAN

Peter Mager		| wyserd!psm@bu.edu  | 617-890-2084
28 Wimbledon Circle	| psm@bu.edu
Waltham, MA 02154	| ...bu!wyserd!psm