46: Mark S. Miller on Distributed Objects, Part 1

<p>Calling all programming language nerds! Distinguished computer scientist Mark S. Miller (presently at <a href="https://agoric.com/">Agoric</a>) joins us to tell us all about distributed object programming languages and their history! We talk about actors, a bit of Xanadu, and little known but incredibly influential programming languages like Flat Concurrent Prolog, Joule, and E!</p><p>Actually there's so much to talk about that this episode is just part one! There's more to come!</p><p><strong>Links:</strong></p><ul><li><p>The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model#Fundamental_concepts">actor model</a> (the core of which is sometimes distinguished from modified variants by as being called &quot;the classic actor model&quot;). Long history; Tony Garnock-Jones' <a href="https://eighty-twenty.org/2016/10/18/actors-hopl">History of Actors</a> is maybe the cleanest writeup</p></li><li><p>The <a href="https://papers.agoric.com/papers/#aos">Agoric Open Systems papers</a> by Mark Miller and Eric Drexler are a good background into the underlying motivations that got Mark into distributed objects</p></li><li><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKr-mvz8uvUgybLg53lgXSeLOp4BiwvB2">markm-talks</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKr-mvz8uvUg70w0yKGfytaDqxiIBNo_L">markm-more-talks</a> which are <em>mostly</em> about object capability security topics</p></li><li><p>APConf keynote, <a href="https://conf.tube/w/g87k3yKzYwpGhtohvQdC3k">Architectures of Robust Openness</a> by Mark S. Miller (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAfjEnu6R2g">YouTube copy</a>)</p></li><li><p><a href="https://share.tube/w/aaoHySAyiJPf3FUoxjAHbw">Mark diagraming a (certificate based) object capabilities flow at Rebooting Web of Trust 2017</a> (when Mark and Christine first met!)</p></li><li><p>The history of Mark and company performing civil disobediance to make cryptography available to everyone is discussed in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv8OFSWZkGs">When Encryption Was a Crime: The 1990s Battle for Free Speech in Software</a>, part of a <a href="https://reason.com/video/2020/10/07/before-the-web-the-1980s-dream-of-a-free-and-borderless-virtual-world/">four part series</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSA_(cryptosystem)">RSA</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu">Xanadu</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson">Ted Nelson</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines">Computer Lib/Dream Machines</a></p></li><li><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PARC_(company)">Xerox PARC</a>, which is where the Vulcan group happened (which is hard to find information on, sadly).</p></li><li><p>Mark mentions some of his colleagues who worked with him in the Vulcan group, including Dean Tribble (who worked on Joule, see more below) and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_G._Bobrow">Danny Bobrow</a> who is famous for his groundbreaking program <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUDENT_(computer_program)">STUDENT</a> (<a href="https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/5922">Natural Language Input for a Computer Proglem Solving System</a> is an incredible read, detailing a program (written in lisp!) which could read algebra &quot;word problems&quot; written in plain English and solve them... in 1964!).</p></li><li><p>Flat Concurrent Prolog... it's tough to find things about! Presumably here's <a href="https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/323779.323739">the paper Mark mentioned that Dean lead on Flat Concurrent Prolog</a> from the Vulcan group which lead to Joule's channels. <a href="http://www.erights.org/history/fcp.html">A bit more on (go figure) erights.org</a>!</p></li><li><p>The <a href="http://erights.org/history/joule/">Joule manual</a> is still a very interesting read, if you can find the time. Talks about channels in depth.</p></li><li><p>Here's the <a href="http://www.usingcsp.com/cspbook.pdf">Communicating Sequential Processes book</a> by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Hoare">Tony Hoare</a>, quite a nerdy read!</p></li><li><p>On capabilities and actors... we'll get to this more in the next episode, but for now we'll leave the <a href="http://erights.org/elib/capability/ode/index.html">Ode to the Granovetter Diagram</a> paper here (it's a truly amazing document!)</p></li></ul>