Archives for posts with tag: C9-Conversations

C9 Conversations: Yuri Gurevich On Logic, Imperative, Abstraction and Algorithms

February 9, 10 //
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Welcome to the latest installment of C9 Conversations. For this episode, we were very fortunate to get a chance to converse openly with one of the world’s preeminent mathematical logicians, the great Yuri Gurevich.

Dr. Gurevich is Professor Emeritus of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan. He is currently a principle research scientist in Wolfram Schulte’s RiSE team (Research in Software Engineering group at Microsoft Research).

Originally, Dr. Gurevich started his career as an algebraist. Later he became a logician. Then he moved to computer science, where his main projects have been Abstract State Machines, Average Case Computational Complexity, and Finite Model Theory. Dr. Gurevich has been honored as a Dr. Honoris Causa of the University of Limburg, Belgium (1998), as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (1996), as well as a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1995).

Dr. Gurevich’s fundamental work on the theory of Abstract State Machines (ASMs) is of paramount importance for theoretical and applied computer science. The significance of the theoretical concepts developed by Gurevich is confirmed by the substantial impact they have on mathematical modeling of discrete dynamic systems.

*This is probably the only interview in C9’s history where a good case is made for imperative programming versus declarative and functional (this starts right off the bat at around 02:31).

Read Yuri’s Annotated Articles

Tune in. Meet Yuri Gurevich.

C9 Conversations: Brian Beckman on Complexity [C9 Conversations: Brian Beckman on Complexity]

November 27, 09 //
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In this second installment of C9 Conversations, a format where we sit down with various big thinkers to discuss a wide range of big topics related to computing; all in high quality video and audio, the topic is Complexity (ambient complexity, to be precise – it’s hard to program systems that are radically composable. Why?).

Dr. Brian Beckman is an astrophysicist and software architect with a long history of dealing with various levels of complexity. In some sense, most of what we do as programmers and engineers is control complexity to solve problems of various difficulty. In our world of software engineering, we strive to carve simplicity out of the complexity of computing. Dr. Beckman provides his insights into why it so hard to achieve radical composability in the software systems we design and build and what it will take to realize ambient simplicity as we march into the increasingly complex world of general purpose computing.

We think you’ll really enjoy this conversation with one of Microsoft’s best thinkers.

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C9 Conversations: Yousef Khalidi on Cloud Computing

November 11, 09 //
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Yousef Khalidi is a Distinguished Engineer with a rich history in both operating system design and distributed computing. Yousef is responsible for the overall design of Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud operating system (which includes the Azure development platform in addition to the “OS”, aka Windows Azure). Windows Azure is an operating system in the sense that it supplies a host of core services, process scheduling and management, identity management, etc, that we typically expect from a general purpose operating system.

In this first installment of C9 Conversations (we sit down with various Microsoft technical leaders to discuss a wide range of topics related to general purpose computing; all in high quality video and audio (big thanks to Tina Summerford for producing this new series)), the topic is cloud computing. What is it, exactly? Why does it matter? What are the challenges involved in taking software to the cloud? What does that mean, exactly? Is Windows Azure an operating system by analogy? What is Windows Azure, exactly? And more..

Yousef will be presenting his ideas on cloud computing and its future at PDC09 as part of the Technical Leaders track. Make sure to attend his talk if you’re interested in how Microsoft thinks about the future of cloud computing.