Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGPLAN workshop on Types in language design and implementation

Abstract

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the 8th ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Types in Language Design and Implementation --- TLDI'12. The TLDI workshops are a continuation of the Types in Compilation (TIC) workshops, the first of which was held in 1997. Initially biennial, TLDI is now an annual workshop. The role of types in all aspects of language design, compiler construction, and software development has expanded greatly in recent years. Type systems, type-based analyses, and typebased reasoning frameworks have led to new concepts in compilation techniques for modern programming languages, verification of safety and security properties of programs, program transformation and optimization, and many other areas. The mission of the TLDI series of workshops is to bring together researchers in all these areas to share novel ideas and stimulate interaction and discussion on the ever-expanding use of types. This year saw one significant change to the workshop organization. There were two distinct submission categories: full papers (to be included in the published proceedings, as always) and two page proposals for talks on more speculative or unfinished work. The aim was to foster a more informal atmosphere while maintaining the TLDI tradition of excellent presentations of polished technical work. The call for papers this year attracted 13 submissions. All received at least 3 reviews, with most receiving between 4 and 5 reviews; every submission had at least one expert review or, failing that, multiple high-confidence reviews. After a weeklong electronic meeting conducted via Eddie Kohler's wonderful HotCRP conference management system, the program committee decided to accept 8 full papers and 3 short proposals for presentations for the workshop. The accepted papers concern the application of types in a range of areas, including object-oriented language design, concurrency, databases, and theorem proving.