Need for common programming platform

Description:

English is one of the most widely used languages in the world with which people from diverse parts of the planet can communicate. The world language is a phenomena of both historical background and current consensus. It serves as a common platform on top of which heterogeneity is hidden. Similarly, this could, and with great demand, to happen in the computing world where exist various kinds of programming languages and a great many chances to communicate. In fact, the need for common programming platform is becoming more and more pressing as a result of increasing demand for concurrent application cooperation, especially over the wide area network. It is not too hard to think of the advantages of having a common platform for all programs just as having a common language for people to speak. In that case, inter process communication would be straightforward, component reuse would prevail, very large scale cross-domain cooperation would be possible... This is a fascinating picture which all computer scientists want to pursue and they are gradually getting to that.

Enablers:

• The need for easier inter process communication
  
• The need for easier worldwide resouce sharing
  
• The need for easier programming to utilize distributed resources and communicate between other processes or programs.
  
• The need to hide heterogeneous natures of underlining hardware and software platforms
  

Inhibitors:

• Close source software development in some commercial companies
  

Paradigms:

With common programming platform,inter process communication would be straightforward, component reuse would prevail, very large scale cross-domain cooperation would be possible...
Nowadays grid computing is trying to offer a tip of an iceberg. It provides a common programming platform as the middleware on top of heterogeneous hardward and software architectures for every program possible. The programming toolkit provided by grid platform, such as GAT and globus toolkit, can be adapted by every popular programming languages to utilize grid resources tranparently. This is a giant step towards the goal of having a world language in the programming world, while leaving existing programming languages and models intact. A seamless integration of more advanced common platform will emerge, driven by the need, and we should expect a thriving future on this.

Experts:

Professor Henri Bal, Vrije Unversiteit Amsterdam, http://www.cs.vu.nl/~bal
Professor Ian Foster, University of Chicago, http://www-fp.mcs.anl.gov/~foster/
Dutch grid, http://www.dutchgrid.nl
Gridlab, http://www.gridlab.org
Globus, http://www.globus.org
Global Grid Forum, http://www.ggf.org

Timing:

Common programming platform is developing very fast with the boost of grid technology. Although there were attempts to achieve this in the past, actually nearly every creator of a certain programming language would like his language to become the world language in imagination, we are still not so far away from a good starting point.

Web Resources:

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