Advanced Topics in Programming Languages (R04)

Organisation

This is a reading group covering a range of topics in Programming Languages. That's a very broad subject, including language design, semantics, compilers, analysis, verification, etc., so we can only touch on a selection of the important ideas. Each week we'll focus on one or two papers, as in the schedule below. Everyone should read all of these before the meeting. One person will be assigned (by me) to present each paper, or one person for each part of the longer ones. That person should prepare a presentation: Everyone else, of course, should be prepared to discuss the work, and to ask (or answer!) questions.

In addition to this, in the Lent term you'll be asked to produce a written literature review, addressing some topic suggested by you and agreed with me before the midpoint of term. This should be between 10-15 pages (in A4, 11pt, 1 inch margins, including references). The deadline will be at the end of term.

Assessment will be based on (a) attendence and participation in class, (b) presentations, and (c) your literature review.

Michaelmas 2009 (Mondays 3-4pm, SW01)

Preamble

Some Classics

Low-level Semantics and Compilation

Michaelmas Paper Assignment (version 4, of 14 Oct)

Alex Katovsky Week 2a (SOS)
Matko Botincan (PhD) Week 2b (SOS)
Samuel Olatanji Week 3a (Next 700)
Kwok Ho Cheung Week 3b (Concepts)
Steffen Loesch Week 4a (Axiomatic)
Maciej Wos Week 4b (LCF)
Danish Zeb Week 5a (Type Poly)
Alex Katovsky Week 5b (Abstract)
Steffen Loesch Week 6a (F-to-TAL, 1-3)
Samuel Olatanji Week 6b (F-to-TAL, CPS)
Kwok Ho Cheung Week 7a (F-to-TAL, Closure conversion)
Maciej Wos Week 7b (F-to-TAL, the rest)
Danish Zeb Week 8a (CompCert)
Matko Botincan (PhD) Week 8b (BZ)

Lent 2010 (Thursdays 2-4pm, SW01, 28 Jan, 4 Feb, 25 Feb, 4 Mar)

(Outline Schedule!)

Students

Links

Searching

Books

Conferences and Journals

Many of the main conferences (e.g. POPL, PLDI, ICFP, ESOP, OOPSLA, ECOOP) are linked to from the ACM SIGPLAN or ETAPS pages.

A couple of the main journals: TOPLAS, JFP.

Undergraduate lecture courses

Misc