Re: [abc] nice paper! :)

I can probably be of help with proofreading the paper - I spent a few of
my teenage years proofreading academic papers/books for various people,
so if nothing else can pick out spelling mistakes etc.

It looks like I may have to spend most of tomorrow on a school
visit/Access event, but if someone could email me a recent copy of the
paper asap I'd be more than happy to cast a "fairly technical but not
too involved" eye over it.

Chris

Oege de Moor wrote:
>
> On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Prof. Laurie HENDREN wrote:
>
>
>>I have read through the paper and made only very minor changes.
>>I am very impressed with the paper. It is very professionaly done,
>>with lots of related work (thanks Oege for all your research there!...
>>I think it helps it be an AOSD paper rather than just a compiler paper)
>
>
> Erm. There are errors in that, like the fact that I missed the
> public distribution of josh. Thanks to Ondrej for noting that,
> and a little hint to everyone else to pick a random reference
> and check that what I said is actually true!
>
>
>>I don't see any major changes left to be made. Someone needs to
>>design our "abc technical report latex format" so we can make
>>the technical report version as soon as we submit the paper and
>>then put it on the aspectbench.org web site and send copies to
>>our friends. I would love to do it, but I seem to have a queue
>>of "other papers" I am supposed to be working on.
>
>
> right, that would be nice.
>
>
>>I guess we also need an official "last reader" who goes over
>>it for a last time looking for typos. I am afraid I'm not so good
>>at that any more .... I seem to have gained speed at the expense
>>of accuracy ....
>
>
> Damien is doing a pass tonight.
>
> Personally I think it is worthwhile to spend tomorrow on making
> a few more improvements:
> a) check references (as suggested above, but also just the
> details of publication venue etc)
> b) look for further typos, obscurities etc.
> c) run the whole thing through a spell checker
>
> A good technique (and I'm not joking here) is to read the
> paper backwards at this stage. If you read it forwards, it
> all goes "yeah, seen that before, obvious..." and you read what
> you think, not what's written.
>
>
>>Anyway, a job well done. I hope the "young guys" found this an
>>interesting experience. Now we have to shift our focus to our
>>release (I go to CASCON next Wednesday, and would love announce
>>the real release then...) and we also have to work on writing the
>>CC paper and doing the analysis stuff for the PLDI paper.
>
>
> I'm sorry, but I'm firmly of the opinion we're not ready for
> a release. Quite understandably, after the IBM visit we have
> slowed down a lot. Before we release, we should
>
> a) compile abc itself (so it is really possible to use aspects
> for extension if people want to do that - it's not just
> a fun meta-circular thing).
>
> b) compile atrack, or at least fix all the problems that
> Ondrej has found
>
> c) pepper the source with javadoc. It is very sparse at
> the moment, and I do not believe the source is of
> use outside our team in its present form.
>
> While I'm really happy with how far we've got, it is a fact
> that, even for a simple program like my ants viewer, there
> were several things that needed fixing in abc before it could
> be compiled. No pathological corner cases: a real program.
> We have to have more confidence that abc won't break on
> the first sizable example people try.
>
> Now of course we *could* race to bring out a release by CASCON,
> and if we're lucky we'll get real users and umpteen bug reports
> to fix that same week. Now we have to ask ourselves whether
> that is the best use of a team that is going to drop in manpower
> a lot as of next week, when term starts and several of the
> Oxford gang have to go back (at least part-time :-))
> to being undergrads.
>
> I think it is far more productive to get on quietly with
> a-c) above, the CC paper, and most importantly with re-weaving.
> That was the crucial idea that started all this in January;
> it got lost in the development fever but fortunately Ondrej
> insisted on getting back to it. We have to get it ready for
> PLDI. The realisation of re-weaving will underlie lots of our
> future plans, and it will be a big boost to our chances of
> continuing the project if we have demonstrated it works. I
> don't think a release would have the same impact.
>
> Sorry for a long email. Obviously it's important we make the
> right strategic step now, with the very limited resources we've
> got.
>
> -Oege
>
>
>

-- 
Chris Allan
Oxford University Student Union Executive
e: chris@ousu.org
m: 07764756949