LOCKSMITH

摘要

The 2006 ACM Conference on Programming Language Design andImplementation (PLDI 2006) was held June 10-16, 2006 in Ottawa,Canada. PLDI 2006 is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group onProgramming Languages (SIGPLAN), in cooperation with the ACMSpecial Interest Group on Software Engineering (SIGSOFT). PLDI is apremier forum for researchers, developers, practitioners, andstudents to present research on programming language design andimplementation.>First and foremost, we would like to thank the authors ofsubmitted papers: without high quality input there is no highquality output. We thank the program committee for their commitmentto reading, reviewing the submitted papers, selecting the programand providing detailed reviews. Thanks also to the 283 PLDIsubreviewers for their input to the reviewing process. Thanks toJeff Foster of the University of Maryland for organizing the PLDItutorials. The EasyChair system was used to manage conferencesubmissions and reviews. Thanks to Andrei Voronkov for providingand supporting EasyChair.>The selection of program committee (PC) members followed thestandard SIGPLAN guidelines, to achieve a balance across factorssuch as research sub-disciplines, seniority, gender, geographiclocation, academia/industry, etc. Submission of papers by PCmembers was not allowed. Out of 24 invitations to serve on the PCsent out, 19 were accepted. Only one invitee declined because ofthe no-PC-submission rule.>This year saw a record 174 unique submissions to PLDI (comparedto the last eleven years of PLDI). After a number of papers werewithdrawn (for a variety of reasons), the PC was left with 169papers to review. Each paper received three reviews from the PC,which gave each PC member about 26 papers to review. This was quitea heavy load but the committee performed admirably. In addition, afourth expert outside review was solicited for nearly every paper.A few papers received five reviews.>PC members declared conflicts of interest in reviewing papersfollowing the ACM guidelines, presented to the PC as follows:i"Each member of the Program Committee will be responsiblefor strictly abiding by the rules on conflicts of interest. You areconsidered to have a conflict of interest on a paper that has anauthor or co-author in any of the following categories: (1)yourself, (2) your past and current graduate students, (3) yourgraduate advisors, (4) members of your research group within thelast 5 years, (5) a co-author of a paper submitted for publicationwithin the last 5 years, (6) an employee of your immediateorganization (academic department, research lab unit, etc.) withinthe last 5 years, (7) someone with whom you have had a significantfunding or financial relationship within the last 5 years, or (8) amember of your family, or (9) someone whose work, for whateverreason, you cannot evaluate objectively."/i>Papers were graded on a six point scale: 3 (strong accept), 2(accept), 1 (weak accept), -1 (weak reject), -2 (reject), -3(strong reject). No zero score (fence sitting) was permitted.Additionally, reviewers provided a confidence score for each paper.Papers that received no positive evaluation score wereadministratively rejected before the PC meeting.>The PC meeting took place in Charleston, South Carolina onJanuary 14-15, 2006 (after POPL 2006). We first discussed the top60 papers (in decreasing order of average score). During themeeting, reviewers could propose other papers for discussion. Weended up discussing about 90-100 papers in total at the meeting.Each of the discussed papers was assigned a "champion" whogenerally had the top score for that paper. The champion summarizedthe paper's contribution as well as the pros and cons of the paper.The discussion then was opened up to the other reviewers of thepaper and to general questions from the rest of the PC. Paperscores were not returned to the authors with the reviews.>We accepted 36 papers, which is a record number of papers for aPLDI program. This reflected the fact that we had a very large poolof quality submissions to choose from, but it is worth saying a fewmore words about this change.>As PLDI matures, we find it diversifying. In addition to thetraditional compiler optimization papers (which did make up thelargest category of submissions), we find papers submitted ontopics varying from program verification and defect detection torun-time techniques for memory optimization and new programminglanguages for concurrency. We believe that PLDI benefits fromhaving a diverse portfolio, which a higher acceptance rateenables.>The second point is that by accepting more papers, we increaseour chances of finding a "diamond in the rough". If we were toaccept only "flawless" papers then we would end up with a programconsisting mainly of incremental results in well-established areas.This doesn't help to move our field forward in a significantmanner. To grow, PLDI must take some risks. This means we mayaccept some "slightly flawed" but promising papers in order toexpose hidden jewels and to encourage thinking in new directions.Of course, we seek to achieve a high quality technical program.However, "high quality" does not mean "homogeneous".>Because of pre-existing scheduling constraints, the 36 researchtalks had to fit in two and one-half days, so we shortened talks to20 minutes plus 5 minutes for discussion (from the usual 25 minutesplus 5 minutes for discussion). Future organizers of PLDI mightwant to plan for a three-day technical track.