Introducing "PL Papers You Might Love"

Hello! 👋🏽

I’m starting a newsletter “PL Papers You Might Love.” It’s an attempt to share my thoughts on PL and PL-adjacent research papers that I find interesting/valuable/exciting/<insert positive adjective> in some way.

This is my first time writing a newsletter; I don’t have everything figured out yet. I’ve tried to frame my current thinking in a Q&A format below. If you’d like to provide feedback on any of these points (or something not covered here), feel free to send me an email or DM me on Twitter.

Q: What is the cadence going to be?

A: Probably about 1 entry every 2-4 weeks. It will likely vary on the length of the paper, my familiarity with the topic and the level of detail at which I want to cover the paper.

Q: How will you decide which papers to cover?

A: Broadly speaking, I’m interested in covering papers which check one or more of the following boxes:

• Introducing an idea which I feel that one or more industrial languages ought to give a serious shot at adopting.
• Introducing an idea which some industrial language has adopted with some success.
• Providing a solution to (or makes progress towards solving) a problem I’ve run into in an industry setting.
• Introducing a remarkable idea that has stood the test of time.
• Addressing a common misconception people (especially in industry) have about a topic.
• Studying how programmers actually program.

So there’s definitely going to be some “bias” in what papers are selected. However, I think this “bias” is somewhat necessary so that I can meaningfully contribute some perspective of my own.

One thing I’m not sure about: should I cover papers (co-)authored by people who I know have hurt others by being anywhere between an asshole to highly vitriolic? In some cases, there is public documentation, in others, there isn’t. I have some thoughts for and against, but I don’t have a “right answer” here. I’m open to discussing this 1:1, see contact links at the beginning.

Q: Can I suggest papers for you to discuss?

I’m not explicitly looking for suggestions on which papers to cover – I already have a bunch of ideas – but I’m open to them. I may or may not feature suggested papers. If I don’t, I’ll try to at least give you an explanation.

Q: Will the newsletter be paid?

The newsletter will be available for free.

If I can consistently write for 3 months, I may add a pay-what-you-want option. The funds will be used to cover any creation-related expenses paid out to third parties, such as hosting fees (but not bubble tea). If there is anything left over, that will be donated to a charity (exact details TBD; I will share them if/when we get to that stage).

Q: What about some other formats, like video?

I’m not considering working on any video-based format, recorded or streaming. This is for a few reasons:

• I do not have expertise with video editing. Sticking to text means that making changes after publishing, such as a correction or a clarification, is significantly easier.
• Having videos and transcripts (for accessibility and search) require a lot more work compared to writing.
• Archiving videos incurs more disk space and complexity; archiving text is very simple.

I am somewhat interested in trying out a format where I combine discussion of the paper with an interview of the author(s), for specific papers. However, if I end up pursuing that, I still think text would be a better format than video.

If you’ve made it this far, I’m assuming you’re at least somewhat interested in subscribing. So here is a sneak peek at the first 3 papers I intend to cover:

1. A Flexible Type System for Fearless Concurrency (PLDI 2022) by Mae Milano, Joshua Turcotti and Andrew Myers.
2. Stabilizer: Statistically Sound Performance Evaluation (ASPLOS 2013) by Charlie Curtsinger and Emery Berger.
3. Inferring Scope through Syntactic Sugar (ICFP 2017) by Justin Pombrio, Shriram Krishnamurthi and Mitchell Wand.

That’s all I have to share for now. If you subscribe below, you should get the first entry in your mailbox some time within the next 2 weeks!