Programming Languages Writing Seminar
- ÕIS data: MTAT.03.271, 3 ECTS.
- Time: Mondays 14:15-15:45.
- Place: Delta-1008.
- Language: English is preferred, but you may write in Estonian if necessary.
- Contact: Vesal Vojdani.
- Zulip (message Vesal to join room).
Welcome to the programming language research 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 fall seminars, we will focus on writing! 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 core writing component and auxiliary writing clinics. The core component provides additional motivation for writing an excellent thesis and should be useful for all our students. The writing clinics focus on how to write papers for top programming languages and software engineering conferences.
Core Writing Task
For the writing, 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 intermediate versions, and critically review the submitted version of another student.
You will receive a passing grade if the above activities are completed. (Note: I am considering creating some moodle exercises based on the below material and these would then be mandatory.)
Writing Exercises
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 these meetings are not strictly 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.
- This year, we will explore effective use of generative AI for revising papers, experimenting with different prompts based on the various aspects of style discussed in these books.