SPLASH 2020
Sun 15 - Sat 21 November 2020 Online Conference

Onward! Essays is looking for clear and compelling pieces of writing about topics important to the software community. An essay can be long or short.

An essay can be an exploration of the topic and its impact, or a story about the circumstances of its creation; it can present a personal view of what is, explore a terrain, or lead the reader in an act of discovery; it can be a philosophical digression or a deep analysis. It can describe a personal journey, perhaps the one the author took to reach an understanding of the topic. The subject area—software, programming, and programming languages—should be interpreted broadly and can include the relationship of software to human endeavors, or its philosophical, sociological, psychological, historical, or anthropological underpinnings.

Onward! Essays invites not only experienced academics but graduate students to submit essays with constructive criticism of current software development technology and practices, as well as presentations of ideas that could change the realm of software development. Practitioners who are dissatisfied—or satisfied!—with the state of our art are also encouraged to share insights about how to reform—or improve—software development, perhaps by presenting detailed examples of a new approach, demonstrating concrete benefits and potential risks.

Onward! Essays is not looking for research-as-usual papers—an essay doesn’t contain definitive validation; however, regardless of its form or topic, the essay must have “substance.” An essay may or may not have a conclusion, but it must provide some insight or compelling argument, either directly or indirectly stated; the reader should be left—perhaps after some reflection—in no doubt about the claimed insight or argument. The key characteristic of a successful essay is that it shows a keen mind coming to grips with a tough or intriguing problem in such a way that, as Virginia Woolf wrote, “it explains much and tells much.”

Long essays are fine, but essayists are encouraged to consider the virtues of short essays that deliver their points sharply and with precision. Essays as short as a single page are welcome at Onward! Essays. Short essays will be accorded the same status at Onward! Essays as longer ones.

Accepted Essays

Title
A Rhetorical Framework for Programming Language Evaluation
Onward! Essays
Link to publication DOI
Discussion of Aviation Software Oversight Improvement
Onward! Essays
Link to publication DOI
How (Not) to Write Java Pointer Analyses after 2020
Onward! Essays
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
Natural Language Theory Meets Programming Language Theory: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Programming Language Evaluation
Onward! Essays
Notes on Notebooks: Is Jupyter the Bringer of Jollity?
Onward! Essays
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
Putting the Semantics into Semantic Versioning
Onward! Essays
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
Software Design as Story Telling: Reflecting on the Work of Italo Calvino
Onward! Essays
Link to publication DOI
The Wonderful Wizard of LoC: Paying Attention to the Man behind the Curtain of Lines-of-Code Metrics
Onward! Essays
Link to publication DOI

Call for Essays

Selection Process

Onward! essays are peer-reviewed in a single-blind manner. Accepted essays will appear in the Onward! Proceedings in the ACM Digital Library. Submissions will be judged on the potential impact of the ideas and the quality of the presentation.

The Onward! Essays track follows a two-phase review process. This enables us to welcome contributions that contain promising material and have the potential to meet the conference’s standards, but which may fall short of this in their initial form. At the end of the first round, all essays will be either accepted normally, subject to major revisions, or rejected outright. The authors of essays in the second category will get around one month to complete the requested revisions, at which point the original reviewers will decide on final acceptance or rejection. As usual, essays in the first category will also receive feedback from the reviewers, and the corresponding authors will be required to take that feedback into account for the final submission.

In order to facilitate the second round of review, authors of essays in need of major revisions will be requested to accompany their second submission with a cover letter mapping the requested revisions to specific parts of the essay. The program committee will use the cover letter and the revised submission to arrive at a final decision.

The second phase will only be used to elevate promising work to the conference’s standard, not to require additional work on essays already deemed up-to-standard.

Instructions for Authors

Essays should use the ACM SIGPLAN Conference acmart Format, with the sigplan and review \documentclass options. This produces two-column, 10pt files. If you use LaTeX or Word, please use the provided ACM SIGPLAN acmart templates provided here. All submissions should be in PDF format. Please also ensure that your submission is legible when printed on a black and white printer. In particular, please check that colors remain distinct and font sizes are legible.

The following list describes the typical expectations for a submission. However, given the nature of the Onward! Essays track, we understand that authors of certain submissions might have special requirements. For example, if a contribution might require a different media (video, interactive presentation or an art piece). If that is the case for your submission or if you have any other concerns, please contact the PC chair (or, if you prefer, a different PC member) to discuss the issue.

  • All submitted essays should conform to the formatting instructions unless there is a reason founded in the nature of the essay to do otherwise; in this case, please preface the essay with the reasons for the variation.

  • Essays must describe unpublished work that is not currently submitted for publication elsewhere as described by SIGPLAN’s Republication Policy. Submitters should also be aware of ACM’s Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism.

  • There is no limit on the length of submissions, but note that reviewers will not be obligated to read beyond the end of their interest. The main part of the final version should not exceed 25 pages unless there are two program committee members who believe the content requires a longer essay, and the quality of the writing is likely to sustain readers. If otherwise your final version is longer than those 25 pages, you must re-submit it before the final deadline so the program committee can reëxamine it. No limit is imposed on the bibliographic section or other appendices.

Submission Site

To submit a paper, please use the Onward! Essays 2020 submissions page.

Dates
Tracks
Plenary
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Tue 17 Nov

Displayed time zone: Central Time (US & Canada) change

00:20 - 01:00
Breakfast in ParisMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I
00:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

02:20 - 03:00
Cocktails in SydneyMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I
02:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

04:20 - 05:00
Dinner in BeijingMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I
04:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

06:20 - 07:00
06:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

07:00 - 08:20
TKeynotes at SPLASH-I +12h
Chair(s): Steve Blackburn Australian National University
07:00
80m
Keynote
Testing Deep Neural Networks
Keynotes
Mary Lou Soffa University of Virginia
Link to publication
08:20 - 09:00
Breakfast in ChicagoMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I +12h
08:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

09:00 - 10:20
T-2-OnwardOnward! Papers / Onward! Essays at SPLASH-III +12h
Chair(s): Avraham Shinnar IBM Research
09:00
20m
Talk
Example-Based Live Programming for Everyone: Building Language-agnostic Tools for Live Programming with LSP and GraalVM
Onward! Papers
Fabio Niephaus Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Patrick Rein Hasso Plattner Institute, Jakob Edding Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Jonas Hering Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Bastian König Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Kolya Opahle Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Nico Scordialo Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Robert Hirschfeld Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), University of Potsdam, Germany
Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached
09:20
20m
Talk
End-User Software Customization by Direct Manipulation of Tabular Data
Onward! Papers
Link to publication Pre-print
09:40
20m
Talk
Discussion of Aviation Software Oversight Improvement
Onward! Essays
Marc Ronell U.S. Federal Aviation Administration
Link to publication DOI
10:00
20m
Talk
A Case Study in Language-Based Security: Building an I/O Library for Wyvern
Onward! Papers
Jennifer Fish Carnegie Mellon University, Darya Melicher Google, Jonathan Aldrich Carnegie Mellon University
Link to publication
10:20 - 11:00
Breakfast in SeattleMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I +12h
10:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

11:00 - 12:20
T-3-OnwardOnward! Essays / Onward! Papers at SPLASH-III +12h
Chair(s): William Cook University of Texas at Austin, Stephen Kell University of Kent
11:00
20m
Talk
How (Not) to Write Java Pointer Analyses after 2020
Onward! Essays
Manas Thakur IIT Mandi
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
11:20
20m
Talk
The Wonderful Wizard of LoC: Paying Attention to the Man behind the Curtain of Lines-of-Code Metrics
Onward! Essays
Kalev Alpernas Tel Aviv University, Yotam M. Y. Feldman Tel Aviv University, Hila Peleg University of California at San Diego
Link to publication DOI
11:40
20m
Talk
Putting the Semantics into Semantic Versioning
Onward! Essays
Patrick Lam University of Waterloo, Jens Dietrich Victoria University of Wellington, David J. Pearce Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
12:00
20m
Talk
Demystifying Dependence
Onward! Papers
Link to publication
12:20 - 13:00
Breakfast in WellingtonStudent Research Competition at SPLASH-I +12h
  • Aidan Yang, SOAR: Synthesis for Open-Source API Refactoring

  • Gahwon Lee, SASIL: A Domain-Specific Language for Simulating Declarative Specifications of Scheduling Systems

  • Ian C. McCormack, A Software Library Model for the Internet of Things

  • Mona Zhang and Jacob Gorenburg, Design and Implementation of a Gradual Verifier

  • Raphael Mosaner, Machine Learning to Ease Understanding of Data Driven Compiler Optimizations

  • Reed Oei, Psamathe: A DSL for Safe Blockchain Assets

  • Sang Heon Choi, Consolidation: A Technique for Improving Permissiveness of Human-Machine Interfaces

  • Sophia Kolak, Detecting Performance Patterns with Deep Learning

  • Vitaly Romanov, Evaluating Importance of Edge Types when Using Graph Neural Network for Predicting Return Types of Python Functions

12:20
40m
Poster
Student Research Competition
Student Research Competition

13:00 - 14:00
T-4-OnwardOnward! Papers / Onward! Essays at SPLASH-III +12h
Chair(s): Marc Ronell U.S. Federal Aviation Administration
13:00
20m
Talk
Notes on Notebooks: Is Jupyter the Bringer of Jollity?
Onward! Essays
Jeremy Singer Glasgow University
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
13:20
20m
Talk
Intrepydd: Performance, Productivity and Portability for Data Science Application Kernels
Onward! Papers
Tong Zhou Georgia Institute of Technology, Jun Shirako Georgia Institute of Technology, Anirudh Jain Georgia Institute of Technology, Sriseshan Srikanth Georgia Institute of Technology, Thomas Conte Georgia Institute of Technology, Richard Vuduc Georgia Tech, Vivek Sarkar Georgia Institute of Technology
Link to publication
13:40
20m
Talk
A principled approach to REPL interpreters
Onward! Papers
L. Thomas van Binsbergen CWI, Mauricio Verano Merino Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Pierre Jeanjean Inria, Univ Rennes, CNRS, IRISA, Tijs van der Storm CWI & University of Groningen, Netherlands, Benoit Combemale University of Rennes, France / Inria, France / CNRS, France / IRISA, France, Olivier Barais University of Rennes, France / Inria, France / CNRS, France / IRISA, France
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
14:20 - 15:00
Cocktails in ParisMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I +12h
14:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

15:00 - 16:00
T-5-OnwardOnward! Essays / Onward! Papers at SPLASH-III +12h
Chair(s): Stephen Kell University of Kent
15:00
20m
Talk
Natural Language Theory Meets Programming Language Theory: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Programming Language Evaluation
Onward! Essays
Stefan K. Muller Carnegie Mellon University, Hannah Ringler Carnegie Mellon University, USA
15:20
20m
Talk
Software Design as Story Telling: Reflecting on the Work of Italo Calvino
Onward! Essays
Paolo Ciancarini University of Bologna / Innopolis University, Sergey Masyagin Innopolis University, Russia, Giancarlo Succi Innopolis University
Link to publication DOI
15:40
20m
Talk
Analogy-Making as a Core Primitive in the Software Engineering Toolbox
Onward! Papers
Matthew Sotoudeh University of California, Davis, Aditya V. Thakur University of California, Davis
Link to publication Pre-print Media Attached
16:20 - 17:00
Breakfast in SeoulMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I +12h
16:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

18:20 - 19:00
Cocktails in RioMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I +12h
18:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

19:00 - 20:20
TKeynotes at SPLASH-I
Chair(s): Steve Blackburn Australian National University
19:00
80m
Keynote
Testing Deep Neural Networks
Keynotes
Mary Lou Soffa University of Virginia
Link to publication
20:20 - 21:00
Cocktails in New YorkMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I
20:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

21:00 - 22:20
21:00
20m
Talk
Example-Based Live Programming for Everyone: Building Language-agnostic Tools for Live Programming with LSP and GraalVM
Onward! Papers
Fabio Niephaus Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Patrick Rein Hasso Plattner Institute, Jakob Edding Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Jonas Hering Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Bastian König Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Kolya Opahle Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Nico Scordialo Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Robert Hirschfeld Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI), University of Potsdam, Germany
Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached
21:20
20m
Talk
End-User Software Customization by Direct Manipulation of Tabular Data
Onward! Papers
Link to publication Pre-print
21:40
20m
Talk
Discussion of Aviation Software Oversight Improvement
Onward! Essays
Marc Ronell U.S. Federal Aviation Administration
Link to publication DOI
22:00
20m
Talk
A Case Study in Language-Based Security: Building an I/O Library for Wyvern
Onward! Papers
Jennifer Fish Carnegie Mellon University, Darya Melicher Google, Jonathan Aldrich Carnegie Mellon University
Link to publication
22:20 - 23:00
22:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

23:00 - 00:20
T-3-OnwardOnward! Papers / Onward! Essays at SPLASH-III
Chair(s): Crista Lopes University of California, Irvine
23:00
20m
Talk
How (Not) to Write Java Pointer Analyses after 2020
Onward! Essays
Manas Thakur IIT Mandi
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
23:20
20m
Talk
The Wonderful Wizard of LoC: Paying Attention to the Man behind the Curtain of Lines-of-Code Metrics
Onward! Essays
Kalev Alpernas Tel Aviv University, Yotam M. Y. Feldman Tel Aviv University, Hila Peleg University of California at San Diego
Link to publication DOI
23:40
20m
Talk
Putting the Semantics into Semantic Versioning
Onward! Essays
Patrick Lam University of Waterloo, Jens Dietrich Victoria University of Wellington, David J. Pearce Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
00:00
20m
Talk
Demystifying Dependence
Onward! Papers
Link to publication

Wed 18 Nov

Displayed time zone: Central Time (US & Canada) change

00:20 - 01:00
Breakfast in ParisStudent Research Competition at SPLASH-I
  • Aidan Yang, SOAR: Synthesis for Open-Source API Refactoring

  • Gahwon Lee, SASIL: A Domain-Specific Language for Simulating Declarative Specifications of Scheduling Systems

  • Ian C. McCormack, A Software Library Model for the Internet of Things

  • Mona Zhang and Jacob Gorenburg, Design and Implementation of a Gradual Verifier

  • Raphael Mosaner, Machine Learning to Ease Understanding of Data Driven Compiler Optimizations

  • Reed Oei, Psamathe: A DSL for Safe Blockchain Assets

  • Sang Heon Choi, Consolidation: A Technique for Improving Permissiveness of Human-Machine Interfaces

  • Sophia Kolak, Detecting Performance Patterns with Deep Learning

  • Vitaly Romanov, Evaluating Importance of Edge Types when Using Graph Neural Network for Predicting Return Types of Python Functions

00:20
40m
Poster
Student Research Competition
Student Research Competition

01:00 - 02:00
T-4-OnwardOnward! Papers / Onward! Essays at SPLASH-III
Chair(s): Didier Verna EPITA / LRDE
01:00
20m
Talk
Notes on Notebooks: Is Jupyter the Bringer of Jollity?
Onward! Essays
Jeremy Singer Glasgow University
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
01:20
20m
Talk
Intrepydd: Performance, Productivity and Portability for Data Science Application Kernels
Onward! Papers
Tong Zhou Georgia Institute of Technology, Jun Shirako Georgia Institute of Technology, Anirudh Jain Georgia Institute of Technology, Sriseshan Srikanth Georgia Institute of Technology, Thomas Conte Georgia Institute of Technology, Richard Vuduc Georgia Tech, Vivek Sarkar Georgia Institute of Technology
Link to publication
01:40
20m
Talk
A principled approach to REPL interpreters
Onward! Papers
L. Thomas van Binsbergen CWI, Mauricio Verano Merino Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Pierre Jeanjean Inria, Univ Rennes, CNRS, IRISA, Tijs van der Storm CWI & University of Groningen, Netherlands, Benoit Combemale University of Rennes, France / Inria, France / CNRS, France / IRISA, France, Olivier Barais University of Rennes, France / Inria, France / CNRS, France / IRISA, France
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
02:20 - 03:00
Cocktails in SydneyMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I
02:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

03:00 - 04:00
T-5-OnwardOnward! Essays / Onward! Papers at SPLASH-III
Chair(s): Stephen Kell University of Kent
03:00
20m
Talk
Natural Language Theory Meets Programming Language Theory: An Interdisciplinary Framework for Programming Language Evaluation
Onward! Essays
Stefan K. Muller Carnegie Mellon University, Hannah Ringler Carnegie Mellon University, USA
03:20
20m
Talk
Software Design as Story Telling: Reflecting on the Work of Italo Calvino
Onward! Essays
Paolo Ciancarini University of Bologna / Innopolis University, Sergey Masyagin Innopolis University, Russia, Giancarlo Succi Innopolis University
Link to publication DOI
03:40
20m
Talk
Analogy-Making as a Core Primitive in the Software Engineering Toolbox
Onward! Papers
Matthew Sotoudeh University of California, Davis, Aditya V. Thakur University of California, Davis
Link to publication Pre-print Media Attached
04:20 - 05:00
Dinner in BejingMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I
04:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

06:20 - 07:00
06:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

08:20 - 09:00
Breakfast in ChicagoAwards at SPLASH-I +12h
08:20
40m
Other
Awards Session
Awards
David Grove IBM Research, Jens Palsberg University of California, Los Angeles
09:00 - 10:20
WKeynotes at SPLASH-I +12h
Chair(s): Hridesh Rajan Iowa State University, USA
09:00
80m
Keynote
Models and Programs: Better Togethersupported by Futurewei
Keynotes
Sriram Rajamani Microsoft Research
Link to publication
10:20 - 11:00
Breakfast in SeattleMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I +12h
10:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

12:20 - 13:00
Breakfast in WellingtonMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I +12h
12:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

14:20 - 15:00
Cocktails in ParisMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I +12h
14:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

16:20 - 17:00
Breakfast in SeoulMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I +12h
16:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

18:20 - 19:00
Cocktails in RioMeet The Speakers (MTS) at SPLASH-I +12h
18:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

20:20 - 21:00
Cocktails in New YorkAwards at SPLASH-I
20:20
40m
Other
Awards Session
Awards
David Grove IBM Research, Jens Palsberg University of California, Los Angeles
21:00 - 22:20
WKeynotes at SPLASH-I
Chair(s): Hridesh Rajan Iowa State University, USA
21:00
80m
Keynote
Models and Programs: Better Togethersupported by Futurewei
Keynotes
Sriram Rajamani Microsoft Research
Link to publication
22:20 - 23:00
22:20
40m
Social Event
Meet The Speakers
Meet The Speakers (MTS)

Not scheduled yet

Not scheduled yet
Talk
A Rhetorical Framework for Programming Language Evaluation
Onward! Essays
Stefan K. Muller Carnegie Mellon University, Hannah Ringler Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Link to publication DOI