Forty years ago development started on Mix, a partial evaluator designed specifically for the purpose of self-application. The effort, led by Neil D. Jones at the University of Copenhagen, eventually demonstrated that non-trivial compilers could be generated automatically by applying a partial evaluator to itself. The possibility, in theory, of such self-application had been known for more than a decade, but remained unrealized by the start of 1984. We describe the genesis of Mix, including the research environment, the challenges, and the main insights that led to success. We emphasize the critical role played by program annotation as a pre-processing step, later automated in the form of binding-time analysis.

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) have emerged as a plausible way for non-programming experts to efficiently express their domain knowledge. Recent DSL research has taken a technical perspective on how and why to create DSLs, resulting in a wealth of innovative tools, frameworks and technical approaches. Less attention has been paid to the design process. Namely, how can it ensure that the created DSL realises the expected benefits? This paper seeks to answer this question when designing DSLs for highly specialised domains subject to resource constraints, an evolving application domain, and scarce user participation. We propose an iteration of alternating activities in a human-centred design method that seeks to minimise the need for expensive implementation and user involvement. The method moves from a low-validity exploration of highly diverse language designs towards a higher-validity exploration of more homogeneous designs. We give an in-depth case study of designing an actuarial DSL called MAL, or Management Action Language, which allows actuaries to model so-called future management actions in asset/liability projections in life insurance and pension companies. The proposed human-centred design method was synthesised from this case study, where we found it useful for iteratively identifying and removing usability problems during the design.

Domain-specific languages seek to provide domain guarantees that eliminate many errors allowed by general-purpose languages. Still, a domain-specific language requires additional quality assurance measures to ensure that specifications behave as intended by the users. However, some domains may have specific quality assurance measures (e.g., proofs, experiments, or case studies) with little tradition of using quality assurance measures customary to software engineering. We investigate the possibility of accommodating such domains by conducting a workshop with 11 prospective users of a domain-specific language named MAL for the pension industry. The workshop emphasised the need for supporting actuaries with new analytical tools for quality assurance and resulted in three designs: quantity monitors let users identify outlier behaviour, fragment debugging lets users debug with limited evaluative power, and debugging spreadsheets let users visualise, analyse, and remodel concrete calculations with an established domain tool. Based on our experiences, we hypothesise that co-design workshops are a viable approach for DSLs in a similar situation.

Spreadsheets are heavily used in industry, becausethey are easily written and adjusted, using an intuitive visual interface. They often start out as simple tools; however, over time spreadsheets can become increasingly complex, up to the point where they become complicated and inflexible. In many ways, spreadsheet are similar to software: both concern the storage and manipulation of data and the presentation of results to the user. Because of this similarity, many methods and techniques from software engineering can be applied to spreadsheets. The role of SEMS, the International Workshop on Software Engineering Methods in Spreadsheets is to explore the possibilities of applying successful methods from software engineering to spreadsheets. Some, like testing and visualization, have been tried before and can be built upon. For methods that have not yet been tried on spreadsheets, SEMS will serve as a platform for early feedback. The SEMS program included an industrial keynote, "spreadsheet stories" (success or failure), short and long research papers,a good mix of industrial and academic researchers, as well as lively discussion and debate.

We present a separation logic specification and verification of linked lists with views, a data structure from the C5 collection library for C#. A view is a generalization of the well-known concept of an iterator. Linked lists with views form an interesting case study for verification since they allow mutation of multiple possibly-overlapping views of the same underlying list. For modularity, we present our specification in a fragment of higher-order separation logic and use abstract predicates to give a specification with respect to which clients can be proved correct. We introduce a novel mathematical model of lists with views, and formulate succinct modular abstract specifications of the operations on the data structure. To show that the concrete implementation realizes the specification, we use fractional permissions in a novel way to capture the sharing of data between views and their underlying list.

We derive a simple abstract machine for lazy evaluation of the lambda calculus, starting from Launchbury's natural semantics. Lazy evaluation here means non-strict evaluation with sharing of argument evaluation, i.e. call-by-need. The machine we derive is a lazy version of Krivine's abstract machine, which was originally designed for call-by-name evaluation. We extend it with datatype constructors and base values, so the final machine implements all dynamic aspects of a lazy functional language.

The introduction of a non-deterministic operator in even a very simple functional programming language gives rise to a plethora of semantic questions. These questions are not only concerned with the choice operator itself. A surprisingly large number of different parameter passing mechanisms are made possible by the introduction of bounded non-determinism. The diversity of semantic possibilities is examined systematically using denotational definitions based on mathematical structures called power domains

Datalogi, programanalyse, programtransformation