I'd first like to thank Arthur & Edi for a very well arranged meeting.I attended all talks except for one (RacerPro) because I had to get a shot of coffee and some fresh air. This was due to my physical state at that time and isn't meant as a slight against the talk. AFAIK, the ECLM 2009 didn't have an official theme but if there was one recurrent theme it had to be multi-processing / distributed computing in Common Lisp. I'd say in at least four of the seven speeches it was an important of not the main theme of the talk while in another talk it was at least of some relevance.Here are my impressions from memory since I don't have my notes near me. I will skip the lightning talks for this post. Perhaps someone else will review them.A good talk to start off the ECLM with. Basically a talk about the systems they've built at ITA Software , which CL implementations they use and why, what other languages besides CL are used there and in what systems (and why) and their software building practices (code reviews, don't leave home without them!). Also lots of information on how they're working with the different open source CL implementations they use on fixing bugs and adding features.One of the two talks that really stressed the importance of the Electrical Engineering (EE) / Erlang approach to building distributable software components and this talk, like the other talk (David McClain's), also showed a visual interface for making these components and tying them together.A story how Lisp enabled one man to build a software system that's used by a lot (all?) of the big aircraft manufacturers around the world. It was fun to hear how he got his first big customer (Airbus). A very nice talk with a good dose of history, technicalities and advice.The second talk about the EE / Erlang approach to building software and a little more explicit about running software on multiple processors or computers. David McClain's website also has some screenshots of their interface. Visually a stunning talk but I'm easily impressed. I have no idea how well it works in practice, but just going by the talk Common Lisp is used at the cutting edge of technology both for its high performance as well as for its features (multi-paradigm, macros, REPL, etc.). One thing that the Free Software hippy in me regrets is that SpectroDynamics's products are not freely downloadable from the internet. It makes perfect business sense ofcourseand I totally respect their decision (I would do the same!) but somehow it feels like a net loss for Common Lisp. Anyway, I need to digest this for a while since I'm probably wrong about it being a net loss for CL. It would definitely be a net loss for SpectroDynamics to just put their products online for free :-)A nice talk about how CL is used in Japan. Something we, or at least I, do not hear much about. Lots of technical information and examples. Also a nice overview of areas for improvement for CL and SBCL in particular. Things which will no doubt be resolved in the near future.A straighforward, but good, talk about the work that has been done on adding SMP to LispWorks. Of the commercial implementations LispWorks was the most well represented, not only by several of their employees but also by the amount of people that gave the talks that used it. Of the open source implementations it were SBCL and Clozure CL with SBCL having a clear lead IMHO.

Labels: common-lisp, eclm, lisp