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ECOOP 2021
Sun 11 - Sat 17 July 2021 Online
co-located with ECOOP and ISSTA 2021
Mon 12 Jul 2021 17:00 - 18:30 at Summer School - Summer School Chair(s): Andreas Zeller
Tue 13 Jul 2021 08:00 - 09:30 at Summer School - Summer School Chair(s): Andreas Zeller

Programmers are well familiar with BNF as a concise and precise formal notation for defining programming language syntax. Nobody would consider describing a grammar in prose. But more than 60 years since the invention of syntax formalisms, it’s still accepted mainstream practice that programming language semantics, which is the far more delicate part of a language definition, is routinely described by a combination of cumbersome sentences, hidden assumptions, and wishful thinking.

In this lecture, I show how the specification for WebAssembly closes this gap, hopefully demonstrating that there should be little reason to be afraid of formal semantics. It’s merely more syntax! The techniques that the academic community has developed over the past 4 decades work well, and under suitable conditions they scale to a full-blown industrial language. The primary prerequisite is that language designers embrace them from the beginning and exploit the feedback loop between design and formalisation to inform a clean semantics.

Mon 12 Jul

Displayed time zone: Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris change

17:00 - 18:30
17:00
90m
Talk
Who is Afraid of the Turnstile?
ECOOP and ISSTA Summer School
S: Andreas Rossberg Dfinity Stiftung
Media Attached

Tue 13 Jul

Displayed time zone: Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris change

08:00 - 09:30
08:00
90m
Talk
Who is Afraid of the Turnstile?
ECOOP and ISSTA Summer School
S: Andreas Rossberg Dfinity Stiftung
Media Attached