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--- start [2006/07/01 18:57] – jdedecker
+++ start [2010/07/31 12:46] – *Fixed stijnm
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-====== Welcome to Ambient-Oriented Programming ======
+~~NOTOC~~
-Welcome to our website on Ambient-Oriented Programming, an exciting new paradigm of computing geared towards promoting and programming spontaneous interactions between different mobile and/or embedded devices.
-This webpage is also the home of AmbientTalk, our experimental programming language to develop such applications. The current implementation of AmbientTalk is relatively stable and can be downloaded [[at:Download|here]]. A tutorial on the language can be found [[at:Tutorial|here]].
+Ambient-Oriented Programming is a novel programming paradigm for programming spontaneous interactions between mobile and/or embedded devices.
-<note warning>
+{{:at:atlogo.jpg?80  |:at:atlogo.jpg}} This page is also the home of AmbientTalk, our experimental programming language to develop applications for software running on mobile ad hoc networks. To get started, you can read the [[at:tutorial:tutorial|tutorial]] or [[http://code.google.com/p/ambienttalk/wiki/EssenceOfAmbientTalk|the essence of AmbientTalk in 10 steps]]. To experiment with the language, you can download [[http://code.google.com/p/ambienttalk/wiki/EclipsePlugin|IdeAT, our Eclipse plug-in for AmbientTalk]] or simply download a stand-alone version of [[at:download|the interpreter]] and develop code using your favorite text editor (an [[http://soft.vub.ac.be/pipermail/ambienttalk/2010-July/000043.html|Emacs mode]] and a [[http://soft.vub.ac.be/amop/downloads/at2textmate.zip|TextMate bundle]] are available).
-This webpage is under construction!  Please consult the old [[http://prog.vub.ac.be/amop-old|website]] until this website has been constructed.
+<note>
+AmbientTalk is now [[http://code.google.com/p/ambienttalk|open-sourced]] on Google Code under an [[Wp>MIT_License|MIT License]]!
+[[http://code.google.com/p/ambienttalk|{{ http://code.google.com/hosting/images/code_sm.png?150 }}]]
 </note>
-===== What is AmbientTalk all about? =====
+====== What is AmbientTalk about? ======
-Ambient-Oriented programming is a programming paradigm whose properties are derived from the characteristics of hardware platforms for mobile computing. Mobile hardware devices are often provided with wireless networks facilities, allowing them to engage in collaboration with their environment. However, the autonomous nature of these devices as well as the volatile connections over their wireless infrastructure has its repercussions on the software that employs them. The basic assumption of the Ambient-Oriented Programming paradigm is that languages should incorporate possible network failures at the heart of their programming model.
-From this observation, several characteristics of programming languages can be derived. Informally we state that an ambient-oriented language is :
+Ambient-Oriented programming is a programming paradigm whose properties are derived from the characteristics of hardware platforms for mobile computing. Mobile hardware devices are often provided with wireless networks facilities, allowing them to engage in collaboration with nearby devices in their environment. However, the autonomous nature of these devices as well as the volatile connections over their wireless infrastructure has its repercussions on the software that employs them. The basic assumption of the Ambient-Oriented Programming paradigm is that languages should incorporate possible network failures at the heart of their programming model.
-  * **Prototype-based** The mismatch between classes and distribution is well-documented and further aggravated in the context of mobile computing.
-  * **Non-blocking** To avoid harming the autonomy of the mobile devices, no device should be blocked awaiting either to send a message or receive a result.
-  * **Communication-Aware** To encompass network failures, objects should be able to keep a log of their own activities, allowing for error recovery.
-  * **Resource-Aware** Service discovery is an integral part of any ambient-oriented language since resources are encountered dynamically in the ever-changing network topology surrounding a device.
-==== Further Reading ====
+From this observation, several characteristics of programming languages can be derived. Our own experimental language, AmbientTalk, differs from most traditional languages because:
+  * It employs a purely //event-driven// concurrency framework, founded on actors.
+  * It abandons the RPC abstraction in favor of //asynchronous, non-blocking// message passing. Because the system automatically buffers such messages while the receiver of the message is disconnected, the programmer can make abstraction from temporary network failures //by default//.
+  * It has built-in programming language constructs for objects to discover one another in the local ad hoc network. Peer-to-peer //service discovery// is built into the language.
+  * It features a functional, object-oriented kernel language built upon the principles of prototype-based programming (based on Scheme, Self and Smalltalk). The kernel language is reflective and hence extensible from within the language itself.
-**Ambient-Oriented Programming**, Jessie Dedecker, Tom Van Cutsem, Stijn Mostinckx, Theo D'Hondt, Wolfgang De Meuter.
+Check out the [[at:introduction|introduction]] to AmbientTalk for a hands-on example showing you the benefits in actual code. Alternatively, glance at the [[at:byexample|key expressions]] in the language to get a 60-second overview of the language's design and intents.
-In "OOPSLA '05: Companion of the 20th annual ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications. Pages 31-40. San Diego, U.S.A. ACM Press.", 2005 [ [[http://prog.vub.ac.be/Publications/2005/vub-prog-tr-05-10.pdf|download]] ]
-**Ambient-Oriented Programming in AmbientTalk**, Jessie Dedecker, Tom Van Cutsem, Stijn Mostinckx, Theo D'Hondt, Wolfgang De Meuter.  In "Proceedings of the 20th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP), Dave Thomas (Ed.), Lecture Notes in Computer Science Vol. 4067, pp. 230-254, Springer-Verlag.", 2006
+You can also watch the following screencast where we show how to implement a simple echo server for mobile ad hoc networks. We introduce AmbientTalk's support for peer-to-peer service discovery, asynchronous messages, futures and how remote object references are resilient to network failures by default:
-[ [[http://prog.vub.ac.be/Publications/2006/vub-prog-tr-06-11.pdf|download]] ]
-More information can also be found in the [[research:papers|Papers]] section.
+<html>
+<object width="400" height="300"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13727131&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" /><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=13727131&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="300"></embed></object><p><a href="http://vimeo.com/13727131">AmbientTalk Screencast: a simple echo server</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user4375573">Tom Van Cutsem</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
+</html>
-===== Research Topics =====
+AmbientTalk is not our only research artifact. We have ported the ideas of Ambient-oriented Programming to Scheme, leading to the [[ischeme:ischeme]] language. There is also [[crime:introduction|CRIME]], a data-driven programming language which explores the logic programming paradigm to tackle similar coordination issues in mobile ad hoc networks.
-  * [[research:ambientrefs|Ambient References]]
-  * [[research:exceptions|Ambient-Oriented Exception Handling]]
-  * [[research:context|Role-Based Ambient Communications]]
-  * [[research:dgc|Distributed Garbage Collection]]
-===== Contact =====
+AmbientTalk's [[http://soft.vub.ac.be/Publications/2007/vub-prog-tr-07-16.pdf|mirages]] have inspired the development of [[http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=harmony:proxies|proxies]] in [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1R8KGKkDjU|ECMAScript harmony]].
-  * The AmbientTalk user list, for questions and general information on AmbientTalk: ''ambienttalk-user at prog.vub.ac.be''
+====== Contact ======
-  * [[http://prog2.vub.ac.be:9006/JForum/forums/list.page|The AmbientTalk Forum]]
+The [[http://soft.vub.ac.be/mailman/listinfo/ambienttalk|AmbientTalk mailing list]], for questions and general information on AmbientTalk: {{:listadress.gif}}. If you want to contact any one of us personally, please see the [[people|People pages]] for personal contact details.
+====== Further Reading ======
+If you're interested in the Ambient-oriented Programming paradigm in general, check out the [[research:papers|papers on AmOP]] page. The seminal [[http://prog.vub.ac.be/Publications/2005/vub-prog-tr-05-10.pdf|OOPSLA2005 Onward! paper]] pretty much sums up our earliest musings on AmOP. A year later, at [[http://prog.vub.ac.be/Publications/2006/vub-prog-tr-06-11.pdf|ECOOP2006]], we refined these ideas and applied them to our first AmbientTalk prototype.
+If you're interested in the AmbientTalk programming language, check out the [[research:atpapers|papers on AmbientTalk]] page. The [[http://prog.vub.ac.be/Publications/2006/vub-prog-tr-06-11.pdf|ECOOP2006 paper]] is the first paper describing AmbientTalk in-depth. However, since mid-2006, the language has been extensively revised. A good starting point for reading about the revised language is the [[http://prog.vub.ac.be/Publications/2007/vub-prog-tr-07-17.pdf|SCCC2007 paper]].
+====== Research Topics ======
+  * [[research:ambientrefs|Ambient References]]
+  * [[research:recap|Reactive Context-Aware Computing]]
+  * [[research:context|Context-Dependent Behaviour Adaptations]]
+  * [[research:dgc|Distributed Garbage Collection]]
+  * [[research:rfid|Mobile RFID-enabled Applications]]
+  * [[research:modelling|Modelling for Ambient Intelligence]]
+  * [[research:biomodels|Biologically-Inspired Programming Models]]