Dynamic Languages Symposium (DLS)
Mission
The Dynamic Languages Symposium (DLS) is a forum for discussion of
dynamic languages, their implementation and application. While mature
dynamic languages including Smalltalk, Lisp, Scheme, Self, Prolog, and
APL continue to grow and inspire new converts, a new generation of
dynamic scripting languages such as JavaScript, Python, Ruby, PHP,
Tcl, Lua, and Clojure are successful in a wide range of
applications. DLS provides a place for researchers and practitioners
to come together and share their knowledge, experience, and ideas for
future research and development.
http://www.sigplan.org/Conferences/DLS/
Latest
In 2024, the Dynamic Languages Symposium will take a hiatus.
We are planning to return in 2025!
If you have any questions or suggestions, please reach out to the steering committee chair!
Awards
- Most Notable Paper Award 2024 for 2014
- Recipients: Vanessa Freudenberg, Dan Ingalls, Tim Felgentreff, Tobias Pape, Robert Hirschfeld
- Title: SqueakJS: A Modern and Practical Smalltalk that Runs in Any Browser
- Conference: DLS 2014
- Paper: https://doi.org/10.1145/2661088.2661100
- Citation: This paper reports on SqueakJS, a fully compatible Squeak/Smalltalk implemented in pure JavaScript. In 2014, it demonstrated that with thoughtful implementation techniques, browsers and their JavaScript VMs can enable applications as dynamic and interactive as Smalltalk environments. Furthermore, the paper details how powerful programming language features such as object enumeration, application snapshotting, custom graphics interfaces, as well as basic file abstractions can be realized inside the browser environment.
Today, SqueakJS continues to be used in education, for web applications, and as environments to preserve important parts of Smalltalk’s history, and with it, computing history.
- Certificate: pdf
- Most Notable Paper Award 2023 for 2013
- Recipients: Esteban Allende, Johan Fabry, Éric Tanter
- Title: Cast Insertion Strategies for Gradually-Typed Objects
- Conference: DLS 2013
- Paper: https://doi.org/10.1145/2508168.2508171
- Citation: This paper explored the costs, both at micro and macro scale,
of various strategies for protecting gradual types in a gradually-typed
programming language, examining how different strategies affected untyped,
typed, or both components of code. It is a seminal contribution to understanding
the performance of gradual typing, which since then has been an area of important research.
The strategies used in gradually-typed languages today can trace their lineage
back to the strategies described and proposed in this paper.
In particular, the proposed hybrid approach has been adapted time and
time again by many systems, giving this work a lasting impact beyond its original scope.
- Certificate: pdf
- Most Notable Paper Award 2022 for 2012
- Recipients: Thomas Würthinger, Andreas Wöß, Lukas Stadler, Gilles Duboscq, Doug Simon, and Christian Wimmer
- Title: Self-optimizing AST interpreters
- Conference: DLS 2012
- Paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2384577.2384587
- Citation: Over the past decade, the authors and their collaborators
have taken the ideas from this paper and turned it into the Truffle and GraalVM system,
which has revolutionized how we implement languages on the JVM.
Today, the GraalVM is a major product and Truffle is a language implementation technology
producing high-performance implementations of everything from Ruby to C,
all built upon the ideas of AST rewriting in the interpreter.
- Certificate: pdf
- Most Notable Paper Award 2021 for 2011
- Recipients: Maxime Chevalier-Boisvert, Erick Lavoie, Marc Feeley, Bruno Dufour
- Title: Bootstrapping a Self-Hosted Research Virtual Machine for JavaScript: An Experience Report
- Conference: DLS 2011
- Paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2047849.2047858
- Citation: The 2011 DLS paper "Bootstrapping a Self-Hosted Research
Virtual Machine for JavaScript: An Experience Report" is a great
overview and source of ideas for virtual machine development. It
represents a comprehensive guide to design choices to make in the space
and for that it is still notable today.
- Certificate: pdf
- Most Notable Paper Award 2020 for 2010
- Recipients: Tom Van Cutsem and Mark S. Miller
- Title: Proxies: Design Principles for Robust Object-oriented Intercession APIs
- Conference: DLS 2010
- Paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1869631.1869638
- Citation: The 2010 DLS paper “Proxies: Design Principles for Robust Object-oriented Intercession APIs” is a
prime example of the object-capability model. In short order, it managed to bridge the gap from
research to become an integral part of an important language today.
- Certificate: pdf
- Most Notable Paper Award 2019 for 2009
- Recipients: Alexander Yermolovich, Christian Wimmer, and Michael Franz
- Title: Optimization of Dynamic Languages Using Hierarchical Layering of Virtual Machines
- Conference: DLS 2009
- Paper: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1408688
- Citation: This 2009 DLS paper is an important early paper in the area
of meta virtual machines. It showed a simple and effective approach to VM
construction that was simultaneously explored by multiple research groups
at the time and which has since found further applications.
- Certificate: jpg
- Most Notable Paper Award 2018 for 2008
- Recipients: Jeremy G. Siek and Manish Vachharajani
- Title: Gradual Typing With Unification-based Inference
- Conference: DLS 2008
- Paper: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1408681.1408688
- Citation: The 2008 DLS paper "Gradual Typing With
Unification-based Inference" showed that one can increase
the static guarantees made in a program through an
ingenious combination of gradual typing and
unification-base type inference. The ideas underlying this
paper have found their way into the design of many modern
programming languages, and have had a strong impact on the
research community.
- Certificate: pdf
- Most Notable Paper Award 2017 for 2007
- Recipients: Stijn Mostinckx, Tom Van Cutsem, Stijn Timbermont, and Éric Tanter
- Title: Mirages: Behavioral Intercession in a Mirror-based Architecture
- Conference: DLS 2007
- Paper: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1297095
- Citation: The 2007 DLS paper "Mirages: Behavioral
Intercession in a Mirror-based Architecture" combined the
ideas of explicit mirrors for reflective introspection and
modification with implicit mirrors for behavioral
intercession. The work in this paper influenced and inspired
the design of proxies in the JavaScript language, where it
now has applications in areas such as security, testing,
and virtualization of the DOM.
- Certificate: pdf
- Most Notable Paper Award 2016 for 2006
- Recipients: Armin Rigo and Samuele Pedroni
- Title: PyPy's Approach to Virtual Machine Construction
- Conference: DLS 2006
- Paper: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1176753
- Citation: The 2006 DLS paper "PyPy's Approach to Virtual
Machine Construction" introduced the PyPy Python
interpreter and the RPython framework. Both are still
highly relevant in various areas to this day and will
continue to be in influential for many years, thus
demonstrating highly impressive long-term vision and
impact. The paper laid the theoretical and practical
foundations of constructing a virtual machine from a
high-level description and was consequently built upon by
numerous follow-up publications. The software, which
continues to be developed by a large and active open source
community, proved extensively usable in multiple academic
and industrial contexts.
- Certificate: pdf
- Most Notable Paper Award 2015 for 2005
- Recipients: Pascal Costanza and Robert Hirschfeld
- Title: Language Constructs for Context-oriented
Programming–An Overview of ContextL
- Conference: DLS 2005
- Paper: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1146842
- Citation: The 2005 DLS paper "Language Constructs for
Context-oriented Programming: An Overview of ContextL"
introduced a framework that enables programmers to modify
the behavior of a program based on the context in which it
is used, without requiring changes to the original
program. This paper triggered a cascade of research on
Context-oriented Programming and spawned a community with
its own international workshop series, which is still going
strong today.
- Certificate: pdf
Past events
- DLS 2023
- DLS 2022
- DLS 2021
- DLS 2020
- DLS 2019
- DLS 2018
- DLS 2017
- DLS 2016
- DLS 2015
- DLS 2014
- DLS 2013
- DLS 2012
- DLS 2011
- DLS 2010
- DLS 2009
- DLS 2008
- DLS 2007
- DLS 2006
- DLS 2005
Proceedings
DLS proceedings are published with the (ACM Digital Library).
Steering committee
The DLS Steering Committee shall consist of the following members:
- DLS General Chair, if there is one, who shall serve during the
year of service as General chair plus three more years, for a
total of four years. Note that there is typically no DLS
General Chair.
- DLS Program Chair, who shall serve during the year of service
as Program chair plus two more years, for a total of three
years.
- A non-voting member designated by the SIGPLAN EC, who shall
serve during the tenure of that SIGPLAN EC.
- A member selected by the SC to serve as an at-large
member.
- Any number of Emeritus Members who shall serve for two
years. An Emeritus Member is a former member of the SC who upon
the completion of his or her term is voted to remain on the SC
as a non-voting member.
- Steering Committee Chair who shall be appointed by the DLS
Steering Committee and who shall serve for three years as Chair
and three years as a member of the committee. The SC Chair need
not be a member of the Steering Committee before being
appointed SC Chair.
- Past Steering Committee Chair who shall serve for one year
after the end of term of SC Chair.
Members:
- Chair: Stefan Marr, University of Kent, UK (SC Chair 2022-2024, PC Chair 2019, 2023)
- Tim Felgentreff, Oracle Labs, Germany (Past SC Chair 2019-2021, PC Chair 2018)
- Carl Friedrich Bolz-Tereick, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany (Past SC Chair 2018-2021, SC Chair 2015-2018, PC Chair 2013)
- Matthew Flatt, University of Utah, USA (PC Chair 2020)
- Arjun Guha, Northeastern University, USA (PC Chair 2021, PC Co-Chair 2022)
- Robert Hirschfeld, Hasso Plattner Institute and University of Potsdam, Germany (Member at Large 2018-2021, Past SC Chair 2015-2018, SC Chair 2007-2015, PC Chair 2007, PC Chair 2006)
- Wolfgang De Meuter, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, (PC Co-Chair 2022)
- Anders Møller, Aarhus University, Denmark (SIGPLAN 2022-)
Past members:
- Davide Ancona, Università degli studi di Genova, Italy (PC Chair 2017)
- Johan Brichau (PC Chair 2008)
- William D. Clinger (PC Chair 2010)
- Pascal Costanza (SC Chair 2007-2013, PC Chair 2007)
- Theo D'Hondt (PC Chair 2011)
- Richard P. Gabriel (Member at Large 2007-2013)
- Jeremy Gibbons (SIGPLAN 2012-2015)
- Roberto Ierusalimschy (PC Chair 2016)
- Ranjit Jhala (SIGPLAN 2021-2022)
- James Noble (PC Chair 2009)
- Benjamin C. Pierce, University of Pennsylvania, USA (SIGPLAN 2018-2021)
- Manuel Serrano (PC Chair 2015)
- Peter Thiemann (SIGPLAN 2015-2018)
- Dave Thomas (Member at Large 2007-2013)
- Laurence Tratt, King's College London, UK (Emeritus Member 2018-2020, Emeritus Member 2016-2018, PC Chair 2014)
- Alessandro Warth (PC Chair 2012)
- Roel Wuyts (PC Chair 2005)
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