Jscheme -- a dialect of Scheme for scripting in Java
Date Friday,October 12, 2001
Time 2-3pm
Speaker Tim Hickey and Ken Anderson
Affiliation Brandeis and BBN
Abstract Jscheme is a dialect of Scheme which provides transparent access to Java via a simple and powerful syntactic extension -- the Java-dot notation. Jscheme implements all of R4RS Scheme, except that call/cc is only partially implemented, strings are not mutable, and numbers are represented by the java.lang.Number wrapper classes. Jscheme is fully tail recursive. The Jscheme language has been designed to provide a viable alternative to Java, where the complexity of the Java syntax and semantics is replaced by a simpler Scheme syntax and more powerful Scheme semantics. The data on which Jscheme operations is the space of Java objects extended with a few additional classes (Pairs, Symbols, Procedures). The runtime system is the Java runtime system (threads, exceptions, garbage collection). Jscheme has added some minimal extensions to allow for full control of the Java runtime system. In this talk we describe the Jscheme language, present some of its applications, and discuss plans for future work.
Location 545 Technology Square (aka "NE43")
Room 8th Floor Playroom
Bio Tim Hickey is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Brandeis University. He uses Jscheme to teach web programming to non-majors. His other research includes logic programming, interval arithmetic constraints, groupware, and educational software.

Ken Anderson works at BBN Technologies in Cambridge, MA. There, he develops applications in Jscheme and Java. His other interests include aspect oriented programming and making the world a safer place for software.