CS 6610 - Lectures

Lectures

Date Topic (and notes, when available) Homework Reading For This Class
Tue Aug 23  Welcome To Wonderland All homeworks are posted.
Start early! 		None! (First class.)
Thu Aug 25 Model Checking
SLAM Introduction 		Required:
  1. Thomas Ball and Sriram Rajamani's The SLAM Project: Debugging System Software via Static Analysis
  2. Thomas Ball and Sriram Rajamani's Automatically Validating Temporal Safety Properties of Interfaces
Optional:
  1. Ball et al.'s Automatic Predicate Abstraction of C Programs (most influential PLDI paper award)
Tue Aug 30 Program Verification Using Counterexample-guided Abstraction Refinement Required:
  1. Henzinger et al.'s Lazy Abstraction
Optional:
  1. Henzinger et al.'s Thread-modular Abstraction Refinement
Thu Sep 01 A Simple Imperative Language
Operational Semantics 		HW 0 Due
  1. Winskel Chapter Two: Introduction to operational semantics
  2. Hoare's Hints On Programming Language Design (shorter than it looks)
  3. Spolsky's The Perils of JavaSchools
Tue Sep 06 Contextual Operational Semantics Required:
  1. Wegner's Programming Languages - The First 25 years
Optional:
  1. Wirth's On the Design of Programming Languages (bonus points if you mistakenly choose this one just because it has the lowest page count)
  2. Nauer's Report on the algorithmic language ALGOL 60 (the language that Hoare said was an improvement not only on its predecessors but also on nearly all of its successors)
  3. Cobbe and Felleisen's Environmental acquisition revisited (recent paper -- POPL 2005, uses operational semantics on page 7, figure 11, just skim to that figure and see if you recognize it)
  4. Chen and Tarditi's A simple typed intermediate language for object-oriented languages (recent paper -- POPL 2005, uses operational semantics on page 9, figure 14, just skim to that and note the non-standard syntax -- but you should be able to interpret the (H; V ; x : t = v in e) rule, for example)
  5. Plotkin's A Structural Approach To Operational Semantics (basically a textbook, see chapter 2 for another take on what we're covering in class)
Thu Sep 08 Machine Learning 1
(Guest Lecture: Pieter Hooimeijer)
  1. Hooimeijer and Weimer's Modeling Bug Report Quality
Tue Sep 13 Machine Learning 2
(Guest Lecture: Ray Buse) 		HW 1 Due
  1. Buse and Weimer's A Metric for Software Readability
Thu Sep 15 Proof Techniques For Operational Semantics; Structural Induction Required:
  1. Chapitre Trois De Winskel: Some principles of induction
  2. Wikipedia's Natural deduction, sections 1–5 and 8 (shows judgments and rules of inference for propositional logic; this provides another take on derivations)
Optional:
  1. Phillip's Degrees of Interpretation (Philosophy of Science; relevant if you're interested in the basis of math or theory)
Tue Sep 20 Whirlwind Denotation Semantics HW 2 Due Required:
  1. Kapitel Fünf Winskel: The denotational semantics of IMP
Optional:
  1. Capitolo Otto di Winskel: Introduction to domain theory (read for general concepts, not details)
  2. Lee's A Denotational Semantics for Dataflow with Firing (skim up to and including section 2.4 for an alternative presentation of partial orders, least upper bounds, monotonic and continuous functions, and least fixed points)
Thu Sep 22 Intro To Axiomatic Semantics Required:
  1. Winskel Capitolele sase-cinci pana la sase-sapte (6.5-6.7) si sapte-unu pana la sapte-trei (7.1-7.3): Completeness of the Hoare rules
  2. Hoare's Proof of a program: FIND
Optional:
  1. Attend the CS Department Fireside Chat with Malathi Veeraraghavan and Mark Sherriff. Free food!
Tue Sep 27 Axiomatic Semantics 2:
With A Vengeance 		Project Proposal Due Required:
  1. Winskel Chapters 7.4-7.6: Completeness of the Hoare Rules
  2. Dijkstra's Guarded Commands, Nondeterminancy and Formal Derivation of Programs
Optional:
  1. Necula's Completeness of Axiomatic Semantics (using operational semantics)
Thu Sep 29 Symbolic Execution HW 3 Due (not accepted late)
  1. Manuvir Das et al.'s ESP: path-sensitive program verification in polynomial time
  2. Buse and Weimer's Automatically Documenting Program Changes
Tue Oct 04 Abstract Interpretation Required:
  1. Abramski's An introduction to abstract interpretation
  2. Thompson's Reflections on Trusting Trust
Optional:
  1. Wikipedia's Abstract Interpretation
Thu Oct 06 Abstract Interpretation 2:
The Wrath of Cousot 		HW 4 Due (not accepted late)
  1. Cousot and Cousot's Abstract Interpretation
Tue Oct 11 No Lecture — Reading Day (Oct 11)
Thu Oct 13 Lambda Calculus And Functional Programming
  1. Benjamin Pierce's Foundational Calculi for Programming Languages (pages 1-10)
Tue Oct 18 Lambda Two: Electric Boogaloo
  1. Li & Zdancewic's Downgrading Policies and Relaxed Noninterference (only Section 4 is required; the paper describes secure information flow and non-interference using the lambda calculus)
Thu Oct 20 Simply-Typed Lambda Calculus
  1. Luca Cardelli's Type Systems
  2. Andrew Wright and Matthias Felleisen's A syntactic approach to type soundness (it's not as long as it looks)
Tue Oct 25 Monomorphic Type Systems HW 5 Due
  1. Xavier Leroy's Formal Certification of a Compiler Back-end or: Programming a Compiler with a Proof Assistant
Thu Oct 27 Exceptions and Continuations Project Status Update Due Required:
  1. Weimer and Necula's Finding And Preventing Run-Time Error Handling Mistakes
Optional:
  1. John Goodenough's Exception Handling: Issues and a Proposed Notation (1975, this is the canonical paper on exception handling)
Tue Nov 01 Second-Order Types (Polymorphism)
  1. Wikipedia's Subtype polymorphism
  2. Wikipedia's Liskov substitution principle
Thu Nov 03 Recursive Types and Subtyping
  1. Wadler's Theorems for free!
Tue Nov 08 Cooperative Bug Isolation
(Guest Lecture: Ray Buse)
  1. Liblit et al.'s Bug Isolation via Remote Program Sampling
Thu Nov 10 Automated Theorem Proving and Proof Checking
  1. Nelson and Oppen's Fast Decision Procedures Based On Congruence Closure
  2. Dawson Engler et al.'s Automatically Generating Malicious Disks Using Symbolic Execution (uses symex and theorem proving)
Tue Nov 15 Dependant Types and Data Abstraction
  1. Microsoft's Source Annotation Language (pay special attention to the extent option)
Thu Nov 17 Communication and Concurrency Required:
  1. Benjamin Pierce's Foundational Calculi for Programming Languages (this time, pages 10–end)
Optional:
  1. Attend the Fireside Chat with Jason and abhi after class in Thornton D 221
Tue Nov 22 Automated Program Repair
  1. Weimer et al.'s Automatically Finding Patches Using Genetic Programming
Thu Nov 24 No Lecture — Thanksgiving Recess
(Nov 23 - Nov 27) 		Optional:
  1. Austen's Pride and Prejudice
  2. Barzun's From Dawn To Decadence
  3. Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel
  4. Goldman's The Princess Bride
Tue Nov 29 Grad PL vs. the World Projects Due
Thu Dec 01
5-Minute Student Presentations
1-Minute Questions, 1-Minute Setup
(show up on time)
(class goes until 5:15)
Presentation Signup Reminder & Hints Speech Evaluation Form
  1. Chapman, Peter Marc
  2. Wang, Xiaoyuan
  3. DiLorenzo, Jonathan
  4. Brunelle, Nathan James
  5. McDowell, Kaitlyn Ann
  6. Xiang, Jian
  7. Huang, Yan
  8. Mohan Ganesh, Ashwin Raghav
  9. Wadden, John Pierson
  10. Dorn, Jonathan Andrew
  11. Landau, Bryan Alexander
Tue Dec 06
5-Minute Student Presentations
In MEC 205
1-Minute Questions, 1-Minute Setup
(show up on time)
(class goes until 5:15)
Speech Evaluation Form
  1. Al Islam, Samee Zahur
  2. Zhou, Yuchen
  3. Braley, Colin Andrew
  4. Brady, Adam M
  5. Miller, Katherine Elizabeth
  6. Yu, Matthew Kin-Mo
  7. Dewey-Vogt, Michael Kevin
  8. Wang, Yajun
  9. Liu, Liu
  10. Tong, Tianhao
  11. Park, Shirley Marie
  12. Cha, Sahnghyun
  13. Yanhaona, Muhammad Nur
  14. Dao, Tung Huy