Programming Languages Research Seminar

Software has revolutionized our society: most industries and aspects of our daily lives make essential use of software. It is therefore vital that we are able to develop software that is bug-free and adheres to its specification with high confidence; and that we can modify software to match changed needs by improving its efficiency, adding new features, or modifying its behavior, all while preserving its correctness. Programming languages and their associated tools are an important means to this end.

In this course, you will read scientific journal and conference articles from the field of programming languages, and learn about state of the art tools and principles for language engineering. You will also do a course capstone project related to a research problem, applying methods, knowledge, and techniques from the programming language literature. Possible projects could for example be implementing a small programming language using a language workbench, creating an embedded domain-specific language with a unique feature, extending an existing compiler with a new code transformation or optimization, or using a proof assistant to formalize and prove things about a language or code transformation.