TITLE: OOPSLA Is Over AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: October 28, 2004 7:30 PM DESC: OOPSLA always seems to end to soon. ----- BODY: My access to wireless at OOPSLA is coming to a close. I have a few ideas burning in my mind to be written about, but they will have to wait until I have time while traveling home tomorrow. For now, let me just say good-bye to the conference. At the beginning of his talk, which I wrote about earlier, Ward said: OOPSLA is about programming on the edge, doing practical things better than most. In a panel on the second day, Ralph said that, in some ways, objects were just the excuse for OOPSLA, not the reason. The real reason was hanging around with people doing interesting things, especially people interested in talking about and studying real programs. OOPSLA is a unique conference for the sort of people it attracts. I had the honor of lunching with David Ungar today, and he asked everyone, "What has inspired you this work? What do you want to rush home and work on?" The best thing you can say about a conference is that it does inspire you to hurry home and explore some new problem or approach, or write a new program. OOPSLA does that for me every year. I'll take time to write down tomorrow how OOPSLA has inspired me, but for now I can at least say that examples play a big role in my answer. Well, at least one of my answers. -----