European Lisp Symposium

- 2025, Zürich
(and online)
The programme is here!

There are several ways for you to join ELS online:

The timezone of our schedule is UTC+2. The videos of the streams will stay online for two weeks on Twitch, but will also be available on our YouTube channel. See you online!

Registration

Note: registration is free and not requested for online attendance.
ELS conference package (talks, coffee breaks).
Same as "ELS Late Regular", student price (requires student ID copy via e-mail).

Options

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Invited Speakers

  • Project Oberon: A Late Appraisal. -- Jürg Gutknecht, prof. em. ETH Zürich

    After ETH's success with Pascal in the 70s programming languages like Modula-2, Oberon and Lola in the 80s and 90s served the purpose of codesigning pioneering personal workstations such as Lilith and Ceres and were also used in teaching generations of students.

  • Is Lisp Still Relevant in the New Age of AI? -- Anurag Mendhekar, Paper Culture LLC

    Lisp owes its existence and popularity to early AI research. At one time, the entire AI world revolved around Lisp, which provided an enormous amount of energy for the language’s development and for pioneering technologies in compiler design, language innovation, and high-performance hardware (such as the Connection Machine). However, in today’s AI landscape, Lisp is nowhere to be found. Instead, languages like Python—many of whose ideas are borrowed from Lisp—have become the mainstream tools for modern AI.

    This raises a key question: What made Lisp so relevant during the first AI revolution but seemingly irrelevant in the second? Is there still a place for Lisp in this new AI era? If so, what should the Lisp community focus on to re-enable its relevance?

  • Toward safe, flexible, and efficient software in Common Lisp -- Robert Smith

    Common Lisp is renowned for its ability to express safe, flexible, or efficient code. However, these characteristics are often at odds with one another, especially in practical software co-development settings. Coalton is an embedded language within Common Lisp that leverages a Haskell-like type system to prove type safety of a program and performs a variety of type-based optimizations. Coalton also permits new abstractions that are difficult to express in ordinary Common Lisp. We discuss Coalton and its use at two commercial organizations.

Location

photo Swiss Game Hub https://www.swissgamehub.com/ (CONFERENCE) Erika-Mann Strasse 11 8050 Zürich Switzerland

Hotels

Organization

Programme Chair

  • photo François-René Rideau Đặng-Vũ Bân François-René Rideau Đặng-Vũ Bân MuKn (PROGRAMME-CHAIR) USA

Organizing Chair

Local Chair

Committee

  • photo Conrad Barski Conrad Barski (COMMITTEE) USA
  • photo Dave Cooper Dave Cooper Genworks (COMMITTEE) USA
  • photo Dimitris Vyzovitis Dimitris Vyzovitis Mighty Gerbils (COMMITTEE)
  • photo Eitaro Fukamachi Eitaro Fukamachi (COMMITTEE) Japan
  • photo Gavin Gray Gavin Gray Brown University (COMMITTEE) USA
  • photo Jason Hemann Jason Hemann Seton Hall University (COMMITTEE) USA
  • photo Kristopher Micinski Kristopher Micinski Syracuse University (COMMITTEE) USA
  • photo Marc Battyani Marc Battyani Enfabrica (COMMITTEE) USA
  • photo Marco Morazan Marco Morazan Seton Hall University (COMMITTEE) USA
  • photo Masatoshi Sano Masatoshi Sano Nayuta (COMMITTEE) Japan
  • photo Michael Raskin Michael Raskin LaBRI (COMMITTEE) France
  • photo Robert Goldman Robert Goldman SIFT (COMMITTEE) USA
  • photo Ryan Culpepper Ryan Culpepper University of Massachusetts, Bostom (COMMITTEE) USA

Virtualization Team

  • photo Georgiy Tugai Georgiy Tugai Configura (VIRTUALIZATION) Sweden
  • photo Yukari Hafner Yukari Hafner Shinmera https://shinmera.com Shirakumo.org (LOCAL-CHAIR VIRTUALIZATION) Switzerland

Programme

Times are local to the conference. You can download the programme in iCalendar format here.

  1. May 19th

  2. Registration, badges, meet and greet

  3. Welcome messages and announcements

  4. Keynote - Project Oberon: A Late Appraisal.

    • Jürg Gutknecht, prof. em. ETH Zürich

  5. Coffee Break

  6. Experience Report - Growing Your Own Lispers

    • Michał Herda
    • Wojciech Gac

  7. Lunch

  8. Keynote - Toward safe, flexible, and efficient software in Common Lisp

    • Robert Smith

  9. Coffee Break

  10. Research Paper - The Lisp in the Cellar (remote)

    • Pierre-Evariste Dagand
    • Frédéric Peschanski

  11. Research Paper - Programming with Useful Quantifiers

    • Jim Newton

  12. Short Break

  13. Lightning Talks

  14. Banquet (Group 1)

  15. Banquet (Group 2)

  16. May 20th

  17. Registration, badges, meet and greet

  18. Announcements

  19. Keynote - Is Lisp Still Relevant in the New Age of AI?

    • Anurag Mendhekar, Paper Culture LLC

  20. Coffee Break

  21. Research Paper - A Brief Perspective on Deep Learning Using Common Lisp

    • Martin Atzmueller

  22. Lunch

  23. Research Paper - Scheme-langserver: Treat Scheme Code Editing as the First-Class Concern

    • Wang Zheng

  24. Experience Report - Porting the Steel Bank Common Lisp Compiler and Runtime to the Nintendo Switch

    • Charles Zhang
    • Yukari Hafner

  25. Coffee Break

  26. Lightning Talks

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