Alfred
Aho
Columbia
University
Programming
Language
Compilers
for
the
21st
Century
Abstract: Compiler
construction
has
long
been
viewed
as
a
software
engineering
task
that
has
elegantly
blended
theory
with
practice.
Today,
however,
the
theory
of
compiler
design
is
struggling
to
keep
up
with
the
increasing
diversity
in
software,
languages
and
machines.
This
talk
will
review
some
of
the
challenges
that
trends
in
software
systems,
programming
languages
and
computer
architecture
are
placing
on
the
compiler
designers
of
the
future.
Biography: Alfred V. Aho is a professor in the Computer Science Department at Columbia University. He received his PhD in EE/CS at Princeton University and then conducted research at the Computing Sciences Research Center at Bell Labs. He subsequently served as General Manager of the Information Sciences and Technologies Research Laboratory at Bellcore (now Telcordia) and as Chair of the Computer Science Department at Columbia University.
He is well known for his research in algorithms, compilers and theory of computation, and his 10 textbooks in computer science. He created the widely used scripting language AWK with Brian Kernighan and Peter Weinberger. Dr. Aho is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Helsinki and Waterloo.