[Colloquium] Matthews/Dissertation Defense/12-4-07

[Margaret Jaffey]

			Department of Computer Science/The University of Chicago

					   *** Dissertation Defense ***


Candidate:  Jacob Matthews

Date:  Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Time and Location:  10:30 a.m. in Ryerson 251

Title:  The Meaning of Multi-Language Programs

Abstract:
While over the years many programming language researchers have
investigated how to connect multiple programming languages into a
single multi-language system, there has been a surprising lack of work
on giving formal accounts of the high-level properties of the results.
In my work I address that problem by giving formal framework for
examining the semantics of multi-language systems. I introduce the
framework with a simple language that connects two call-by-value
languages with different type systems, then extend the language
features we consider. This analysis reveals essential similarities in
many different problems in programming language design, such as the
surprising fact that safe foreign interfaces share a interfaces share
a strong connection with higher-order contracts and that a foreign
interface can employ runtime sealing to preserve a typed language's
parametricity guarantees even when interoperating with an untyped
language. Finally, I use my framework to formulate a design criterion
for foreign interfaces, namely that a good multi-language system ought
to preserve the equational properties of its constituents.

Candidate's Advisor:  Prof. Robby Findler

A draft copy of Mr. Matthews' dissertation will be available soon in  
Ry 156.

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Margaret P. Jaffey                             margaret at cs.uchicago.edu
Department of Computer Science
Student Support Rep (Ry 156)        (773) 702-6011
The University of Chicago                  http://www.cs.uchicago.edu
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