Secret Seminar on Programming Languages
- ÕIS data: MTAT.03.271, 3 ECTS.
- Time: Thursdays 14:15-15:45.
- Place: Delta-2047 & Zoom (log into courses to see link).
- Language: English is preferred, but you may write/present in Estonian if necessary.
- Contact: Vesal Vojdani.
- Zulip (message Vesal to join room).
Congratulations, you just found our Secret Seminar, a friendly forum for anyone interested in research on programming languages. You may have a look at ACM SIGPLAN's research highlights for a good overview of all the exciting work happening in this field. Our own research centers on verification; in particular, we develop the static analyzers Goblint and Põder.
For the seminar, we will focus on writing this term! The goal is to take you one step closer to graduation by prompting you to complete one relevant piece of writing. The seminar consists of a mandatory core component and optional writing clinics. The core component provides additional motivation for writing an excellent thesis and should be useful for all our students. The optional component focuses on how to write papers for top programming languages and software engineering conferences.
Mandatory Core
For the mandatory component, you should work on a piece writing relevant to your thesis. If you have not yet settled on a topic for your thesis, you can still write an overview about what will hopefully become your future thesis topic. You will then have to complete the following activities:
- Choose a topics and write a short (one paragraph) abstract.
- Write the equivalent of a regular conference paper.
- The length is not critical, but we aim for 12-20 pages in LNCS format (6-9 pages in two-column formats).
- It should be accessible to your fellow students interested in PL.
- You must submit two intermediate versions of the paper according to the deadlines.
- Please use LaTeX! You can use Overleaf to get started.
- Support one student, providing feedback on their two intermediate versions, and critically review the submitted version of another student.
- Present your paper at a "mini-conference" in January.
You will receive a passing grade if the above activities are completed.
Optional: Writing Excellent Papers
Additionally, there will be weekly meetings for those interested in writing excellent research papers in the field of programming languages. Everyone is welcome to attend, and even undergraduates may find it interesting, but it is not mandatory.
- We will follow Norman Ramsey's Course. He has written comprehensively about this "engineering method".
- A good starting point is Derek Dreyer's Talk, which incorporate some ideas from Ramsey. We should dedicate some time to writing effective abstracts and these fashionable highlight/overview sections.
These meetings are not mandated, but they will be graded using the Apinis Collaborative Quality Assessment framework. This means that all participants give points to other participants. While seemingly chaotic and arbitrary, it has been proven to result in high student achievement.