Anton van Straaten
Anton is a software developer and consultant with a strong interest in the design and development of programming languages. He developed the award-winning software product Class(y), an object-oriented language extension to the Clipper database language. Class(y) extended the Clipper language by adding the ability to create user-defined classes, creating a true object-oriented language, with features such as multiple inheritance and a Smalltalk-style meta-object protocol, based on metaclasses.
Anton also co-developed ExoSpace, a protected-mode linker for Clipper which eliminated memory limitations. ExoSpace was subsequently acquired by Computer Associates, a major software vendor, and bundled with CA-Clipper.
Anton's research during the development of Class(y) led to a strong interest in the formal foundations of programming languages. This has led him to study formalisms such as the lambda calculus, type theory, and programming language semantics. As part of this interest in formal language foundations and applications, Anton developed SchemeDS, an executable version of the formal denotational semantics for R5RS Scheme, the only such implementation publicly available.
Recent activities
- Member of the Scheme Editors Committee, which developed the Revised6 Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme (R6RS), a standard for the Scheme programming language. June 2005 - present. (announcement).
- Member, Program Committee, ACM SIGPLAN Dynamic Languages Symposium 2008, Paphos, Cyprus, July 2008
- Member, Program Committee, ACM SIGPLAN Dynamic Languages Symposium 2007, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, October 2007
Presentations
Anton is a regular speaker at conferences and user groups. Previous engagements include:- Composing Financial Contracts - presented to the New York Functional Programmer's Network (2007), and to the University of Pennsylvania Computer Science Dept. Advanced Programming course (CIS552, 2008)
- Lisp and the Lambda Calculus - presented to the NYC Lisp User Group and at the International Lisp Conference 2003 (NYC)
- Lightweight Languages 2004 (MIT) - Continuations continued: the REST of the computation
Community Web Sites
Anton hosts several community web sites:
- The programming languages community weblog Lambda the Ultimate, founded by Ehud Lamm.
- The official discussion forum for the International Lisp Conference 2009.
- The Scheme Cookbook, run by the Schematics group of Scheme programmers.
- The Community Scheme Wiki.
Contact:
Anton can be reached by email at anton@appsolutions.com