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-====== Ambient-Oriented Programming ======
+~~NOTOC~~
-Welcome to our website on Ambient-Oriented Programming, a novel programming paradigm geared towards promoting and programming spontaneous interactions between different mobile and/or embedded devices.
-{{:at:atlogo.jpg?80  |:at:atlogo.jpg}} This webpage is also the home of AmbientTalk, our experimental programming language to develop applications for software running on mobile ad hoc networks. The current implementation of AmbientTalk is relatively stable. The best way to get started is to [[at:download|download]] the language and to read the [[at:tutorial:tutorial|tutorial]].
+[[http://ambienttalk.googlecode.com|{{:at:fixed_atlogo.png?80 }}]] Ambient-Oriented Programming is a paradigm for programming peer-to-peer mobile applications. This page is also the home of AmbientTalk, our experimental programming language for mobile peer-to-peer applications.
-===== What is AmbientTalk all about? =====
+<note>
-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.
+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>
-From this observation, several characteristics of programming languages can be derived. Informally we state that an ambient-oriented language is :
+  * Read the [[at:tutorial:tutorial|tutorial]] or [[http://code.google.com/p/ambienttalk/wiki/EssenceOfAmbientTalk|the essence of AmbientTalk in 10 steps]].
-  * **Prototype-based** The mismatch between classes and distribution is well-documented and further aggravated in the context of mobile computing.
+  * Download [[http://code.google.com/p/ambienttalk/wiki/EclipsePlugin|IdeAT]], our Eclipse plug-in for AmbientTalk
-  * **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.
+  * Or, 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).
-  * **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.
-Check out the [[at:introduction|introduction]] to AmbientTalk for a hands-on example showing you the benefits in actual code.
+====== What is AmbientTalk about? ======
-===== Contact =====
+Ambient-Oriented programming is a paradigm geared towards mobile computing. Mobile hardware (such as cell phones) is mostly equipped with wireless networking, allowing it to collaborate with nearby devices in its environment. However, because wireless network links are volatile (basically: when devices move out of wireless range, the connection drops), network failures occur much more frequently than in traditional networks. The basic assumption of the Ambient-Oriented Programming paradigm is that languages should incorporate network failures at the heart of their programming model, and not treat them as "exceptions".
-  * The [[http://prog.vub.ac.be/mailman/listinfo/ambienttalk-user|AmbientTalk user list]], for questions and general information on AmbientTalk: ''ambienttalk-user at prog.vub.ac.be''. If you want to contact any one of us personally, please see the [[people|People]] pages for personal contact details.
+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 dynamic OO kernel language built upon the principles of prototype-based programming (based on Scheme, Self and Smalltalk). The kernel language supports reflection using [[http://bracha.org/mirrors.pdf|mirrors]], which provide access to an extensive metaobject protocol, making the language extensible from within itself.
+  * The language syntax derives primarily from the 'curly brace' family of languages, but it mixes in the keyworded messaging syntax from Smalltalk as well. This, together with AmbientTalk's lightweight block syntax, enables you to easily build your own control structures. Like many other dynamic and functional languages, AmbientTalk embraces the use of blocks to express higher-order, functional patterns.
+  * The current implementation of AmbientTalk embraces the JVM as a platform. It's easy for AmbientTalk programs to use Java libraries, and it's easy for Java objects to use !AmbientTalk as an embedded scripting language. This interaction is safe: even when AmbientTalk objects are "exposed" to the JVM, JVM threads [[http://soft.vub.ac.be/Publications/2007/vub-prog-tr-07-15.pdf|cannot violate]] the concurrency constraints of AmbientTalk's actor model.
-===== Further Reading =====
+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.
-**Ambient-Oriented Programming**, Jessie Dedecker, Tom Van Cutsem, Stijn Mostinckx, Theo D'Hondt, Wolfgang De Meuter.
+The screencast below shows how to implement a simple echo server for mobile ad hoc networks. It introduces AmbientTalk's support for peer-to-peer service discovery, asynchronous messages, futures and how remote object references are resilient to network failures by default:
-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
+<html>
-[ [[http://prog.vub.ac.be/Publications/2006/vub-prog-tr-06-11.pdf|download]] ]
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+</html>
-**Ambient-Oriented Programming**, Jessie Dedecker, Ph.D. Thesis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
+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.
-[ [[http://prog.vub.ac.be/Publications/2006/vub-prog-phd-06-01.pdf|download]] ]
+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]].
-More information can also be found in the [[research:papers|Papers]] section.
+====== Contact ======
+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.
-===== Research Topics =====
+====== 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:exceptions|Ambient-Oriented Exception Handling]]
+  * [[research:rp|Reactive Programming]]
+  * [[research:recap|Reactive Context-Aware Programming]]
   * [[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]]
+  * [[research: tuples | Tuple Space-based Abstractions]]