Macquarie University Programming Languages Research Group

On March 26 we will discuss a paper [1] on the compilation of Scala structural types for the Java virtual machine.

[1] Dubochet, G., and Odersky, M. Compiling structural types on the JVM: a comparison of reflective and generative techniques from Scala’s perspective. In ICOOOLPS ’09: Proceedings of the 4th workshop on the Implementation, Compilation, Optimization of Object-Oriented Languages and Programming Systems (New York, NY, USA, 2009), ACM, pp. 34–41.

On March 12 we will continue discussing a tutorial [1] on Agda, which is a dependently typed functional programming language and proof assistant.

[1] Dependently typed programming in Agda, Ulf Norell, Advanced Functional Programming Summer School, 2008

Reading group home page

On December 4 we will discuss a paper [1] and accompanying web page [2] on the issue of whether program obfuscation is possible. This will be the final meeting for 2009. We will take our usual summer break and start up again in February 2010. Happy Holidays!

[1] On the (Im)possibility of Obfuscating Programs, Barak, et. al., Crypto 2001, http://www.springerlink.com/content/telalqdcx3n600uf/
[2] http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~boaz/Papers/obf_informal.html

On November 27 we will watch an overview talk [1] about Google's new Go programming language.

[1] Rob Pike, The Go Programming Language, Google Tech Talk, October 30, 2009.

Recent meetings of the PL reading group have been discussing the Scala type system, particularly type inference in the presence of subtyping, polymorphism and generics.

The slides from the SAPLING 09 meeting (previously known as the 4th meeting) have been posted. They can be found as an attachment at the bottom of the meeting page: http://plrg.science.mq.edu.au/wiki/sapling/Meeting09.

There is no reading group this week due to the SAPLING meeting.

Please see the following page for directions to the October 2 SAPLING meeting at the School of IT, University of Sydney. The meeting will be held in the School of IT Lecture Theatre.

http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/about/directions.shtml

The full meeting program is here:

http://plrg.science.mq.edu.au/wiki/sapling/Meeting09

Tony

SAPLING 09 will start at little bit earlier than previously planned in order to accommodate another talk. The meeting will now begin at 9:30am. See below for the details of the new talk.

Title: Ownership Types After Ten Years

Yi Lu and John Potter, University of New South Wales

Abstract:

Ownership types were devised to allow the enforcement of object level encapsulation. This tutorial-style talk will present a number of variants of ownership types, including more recent extensions for dealing with effects. It aims to present the current state-of-the-art in ownership related research at a broad conceptual level.

The talk will address a number of specific topics: implicit ownership structure via dominators, basic language constructs for expressing ownership (including Ownership Generic Java), external uniqueness, ownership domains, use of ownership in object synchronisation, ownership-based effect systems, including JOE, MOJO (with multiple ownership) and Oval, dealing with object validity.

The program for the 4th SAPLING meeting has been decided. It can be found on the meeting page: http://plrg.science.mq.edu.au/wiki/sapling/Meeting09.

Thanks to everyone who submitted as we have a nice variety of interesting talks. See you on October 2!