Abstract: Early in the history of distributed Smalltalk applications, designers built systems that provided transparent distribution. This enabled distributed applications to be written almost as if they were on a single machine. After the explosion of the Internet in the late '90s, it was widely recognized that this approach led to applications that did not perform well -- application developers needed to be aware of and design around communication latency. One solution to this problem is Replicated Service Objects, an architecture for distributed Smalltalk applications that makes it easy to minimize the impact of network latency.
Bio: Martin has been interested in Smalltalk since he first heard about it in 1975. After a frustrating ten-year wait he finally got his hands on a running Smalltalk system and hasn't let go since. As a senior engineer working on GemStone Smalltalk products at GemTalk Systems, he leads a team that designs and implements a distributed object system that acts as a bridge between a Smalltalk client and a GemStone Smalltalk server. In his spare time, he works on Mist (a Smalltalk-like language with improved modularity and security and no virtual machine) and does a lot of contra dancing. Lately, he's been working on remodeling an old house with attached former church which will become his home with built-in dance hall.