[TYPES] Grand Challenge Problems?

[Purush Iyer]

Derek

 Thanks for the pointer.  I do remember looking at these discussions after
09 POPL.  But they did not, unfortunately, solve my quandry

 By "scientific" I am referring to problems that need either new mathematics
to be invented or perhaps a new method.  It is hard to define what is
scientific, though I am sure all of us would be able to say when presented
with an example whether it is a scientific problem or not.

 I consider problems posed by Alan Mycroft's 1980 paper (on call-by-need and
value) and his 1984 paper (on Recursive type schemes) as posing scientific
questions.   The former led to ten years of papers in POPL and other places
(with nifty ideas by Hudak, Mishra, Jensen and others).  The latter led to
the notion of semi-unification (by Henglein, Kfoury and others).   At the
risk of sounding  vain, I consider my 1997 paper in TAPSOFT on quantitive
reasoning in Probablistic Lossy Channel Systems as raising a nice scientific
question in Formal Methods; it took the discovery of notion of attractors in
infinite markov chains (by Alex Rabinovitch, Parosh Abdulla and others) to
solve the problem effectively.

 My question is simple:  Show me problems that are scientific, that need new
mathematics or blindingly new insights to solve.   I am stumped while
explaining what the deep problems in our field are to Physicists and Control
Theoreticians.   In all of this I realize that work in PLS is synthetic in
nature -- part science, part engineering -- and that, may be, we typically
make up a problem and solve it right away.   Perhaps there are no scientific
grand challenges; but, I dared to ask anyway.  Thanks for hearing me out.

sincerely
Purush Iyer






On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 5:58 PM, Derek Dreyer <dreyer at mpi-sws.org> wrote:

> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list]
>
> A note from the moderator:
>
> I agree with Matthias that Purush's question is a vague and extremely
> broad one, and it's worth asking if there's a more "scientific"
> definition of "grand challenge".
>
> However, given that at last year's POPL there was a panel session
> devoted precisely to the topic of "PL Grand Challenges", I believe the
> question (even in its vague form) is not out of bounds for a
> scientific forum like the Types-list.
>
> FWIW, to address Purush's question, some notes from that POPL'09 panel
> session on PL Grand Challenges are available here:
>
> http://plgrand.blogspot.com/
>
> Thanks,
> Derek
>
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2010 at 11:25 PM, Matthias Felleisen
> <matthias at ccs.neu.edu> wrote:
> > [ The Types Forum,
> http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
> >
> >
> > Dear Purush Iyer,
> >
> > what is a "grand challenge"? I naturally know the funding agency
> > answer:
> >
> >  a tool for extracting a huge amount of money from politicians
> >  who need something graphic to convince voters that their spending
> >  is acceptable and produces 'good' things
> >
> > but I'd like to know whether there's a "scientific" definition
> > that would make it worthwhile discussing the idea on a science
> > mailing list.
> >
> > Thanks -- Matthias
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Jan 16, 2010, at 5:04 PM, Purush Iyer wrote:
> >
> >> [ The Types Forum,
> http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
> >>
> >> Colleagues
> >>
> >> Now that the lek (er, POPL community)   has decided on vexing questions
> >> about papers at POPL, I thought it best to consult this group on a
> harder
> >> problem.  In my current job at a funding agency I am confronted by the
> >> question, from Physicists and Control Theoreticians, "What are the main
> >> *scientific* grand challenge problems in Programming Languages and
> >> Systems?"   I have not too successful to date; hence this e-mail.
> >>
> >> If y'all can come up with a list of five to ten challenges I would
> >> appreciate it very much.  I don't take this question lightly; I had a
> long
> >> chat with Jens Palsberg over the summer and I don't think we were able
> to
> >> make much headway.
> >>
> >> Sincerely
> >> Purush Iyer
> >
> >
>