Freedom from kings.
Freedom from fascism.
Power to the people forever. ♥️

Happy Independence Day 🇺🇸

#LiquidTypes are a lightweight way to specify and check code properties. What stands in the way of more widespread adoption?

Friday at 10:30, @catarinavgamboa.bsky.social presents our #PLDI2025 paper (with Abigail Reese and @alcidesfonseca.com), "Usability Barriers for Liquid Types."

1/3 The US didn’t end up leading the world in computing by luck. It happened because it made long-term, public investments in basic research, especially through NSF. That’s what created the breakthroughs that today’s tech companies are built on.

I'm delighted to announce the 5th edition of Programming Language Pragmatics! I joined Michael Scott as a coauthor. We updated the semantics chapter to use inference rules, & substantially updated coverage of types, OO, codegen, Rust ownership & safe concurrency, async, traits & more!

My largest remaining NSF grant, that was awarded by a competitive process on the recommendation of national experts, was terminated yesterday. The money would have paid for PhD students to invent better AI systems for everyday people who need programs written for them but who can't or won't write...

Our gradual verification work has this flavor—a user can go from no formal specifications and incrementally specify more and more receiving verification (static and dynamic) feedback a long the way.

Combined with @neurocy.bsky.social’s live programming work might be even closer.

Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.

I feel like we need to keep saying this because it’s so insane: This is a legal U.S. resident who has been detained for over a month now for his political opinions.

I care less about Signal chats and more about the blacksite offshore concentration camps we're sending random people to without any semblance of a trial, so I'll be interested to see if the national media can rub their bellies and pat their heads at the same time this week. Historically they can't.

MIT following Harvard's lead here

In case you missed this update, no longer 70%, it’s 90% of people abducted and sent to El Salvador are innocent (“no US criminal record”)

60 Minutes found no criminal record for 75% of the Venezuelan migrants the U.S. sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador. https://cbsn.ws/4lC4Vp5

A Study of Undefined Behavior Across Foreign Function Boundaries in #rustlang Libraries

arxiv.org/abs/2404.11671

🦀 Hello World!

The Rust project now has an official presence on Bluesky! ✨

We'll be posting the same on our Mastodon and Bluesky accounts, so you won't miss anything on either platform.

Two updates: 1) early registration for physical attendees has been extended to April 1 and late registration to April 18, and 2) travel grant information is available on the VerifyThis website (verifythis.ethz.ch), apply by April 8. Hope to see you there!

PLMW@PLDI'25 is now accepting applications: pldi25.sigplan.org/home/PLMW-pl...

Deadline: April 10, 2025

PLMW an excellent place to learn about exciting PL research, from the ground up, and to find your PL friends!

Please apply!

For formal methods folks looking for a new position: @VeridiseInc is hiring a formal methods researcher to work on verification/analysis tools targeting zero-knowledge applications. More details are here: veridise.com/careers/zk-r...

ECOOP 2025 Round 2 papers are due tomorrow! Submit your best work!

2025.ecoop.org/track/ecoop-...

Are you graduating with a PhD? Do you work on program analysis, formal verification, software correctness, or AI? Apply to join the UMass LASER lab as a postdoctoral researcher, a vibrant team focused on using the latest NLP technology to ensure software correctness!

Note, the participation page on the VerifyThis website is not completely up to date. It should be by the end of the week, but we wanted to get the call for participation out since the early registration deadline is only a few days away!

The registration deadline for physical attendees is open until March 21; register at etaps.org/2025/registr.... The registration deadline for virtual attendees is open until April 18; register at forms.gle/BRh56QLu34ao.... 2/2

VerifyThis is a series of program verification competitions bringing together those interested in formal verification. The 2025 edition will be held as a hybrid workshop with ETAPS. Early registration for physical attendees is open until Feb. 28. For more information see verifythis.ethz.ch. 1/2

I recently gave one of the best talks of my career thus far, and thankfully it was recorded, so I figured I share that here!

Thoughts/ideas/questions welcome!

scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Page...

If you wanted to cut waste, fraud, and abuse, you would empower the inspectors general.

If you wanted more waste, fraud, and abuse, you would fire them.