source: doc/papers/general/response @ 25f2798

Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2018 17:01:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Software: Practice and Experience" <onbehalfof@manuscriptcentral.com>
Reply-To: judithbishop@outlook.com
To: a3moss@uwaterloo.ca, rschlunt@uwaterloo.ca, pabuhr@uwaterloo.ca
Subject: Software: Practice and Experience - Decision on Manuscript ID SPE-18-0065

19-Apr-2018

Dear Dr Buhr,

Many thanks for submitting SPE-18-0065 entitled "Cforall : Adding Modern Programming
Language Features to C" to Software: Practice and Experience. The paper has now
been reviewed and the comments of the referee(s) are included at the bottom of
this letter.

I am delighted to inform you that the referee(s) have recommended publication,
but also suggest some minor revisions to your manuscript.  Therefore, I invite
you to respond to the referee(s)' comments and revise your manuscript. All of
the referees' comments are important, but I would like you to pay special
attention to the following general points:

1. If there is any more evaluation that a stack, please add it.
2. How is the compiler implemented?
3. What features are actually implemented?
4. The article lacks some related work. such as Haskell, ML etc.
5. Most of the content in Section 10 RELATED WORK appears to belong to Section 1 INTRODUCTION as a Subsection or as a new Section after Section 1.
6. Many references are not properly formatted
7. A statement about any presence or absence of conflicts of interest with Huawei should be explicitly added.

The paper is long by SPE standards (33 pages). We have a maximum of 40
pages. Please do not extend the paper beyond 35 pages. If necessary, find ways
to cut the examples or text. If you have an accompanying website for the system
where some examples are stored, please mention it.

You have 42 days from the date of this email to submit your revision. If you
are unable to complete the revision within this time, please contact me to
request a short extension.

You can upload your revised manuscript and submit it through your Author
Center. Log into https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/spe and enter your Author
Center, where you will find your manuscript title listed under "Manuscripts
with Decisions".

When submitting your revised manuscript, you will be able to respond to the
comments made by the referee(s) in the space provided.  You can use this space
to document any changes you make to the original manuscript.

If you feel that your paper could benefit from English language polishing, you
may wish to consider having your paper professionally edited for English
language by a service such as Wiley's at
http://wileyeditingservices.com. Please note that while this service will
greatly improve the readability of your paper, it does not guarantee acceptance
of your paper by the journal.

Once again, thank you for submitting your manuscript to Software: Practice and Experience. I look forward to receiving your revision.

Sincerely,

Dr Judith Bishop
Editor, Software: Practice and Experience
judithbishop@outlook.com


We have attempted to response to all the issues raised by the Editor and referee's comments. For two
of the issues, we have "pushed back", with an explanation. Specifically, moving the related work
forward, and moving text from Section 9 into the captions of Table2 and Figure 10.  Our reasons for
not making these changes are address below. Finally, as pointed out below, there are a couple of
issues with the Wiley LaTeX macros that we worked around as best as possible.

   The paper is long by SPE standards (33 pages). We have a maximum of 40 pages. Please do not
   extend the paper beyond 35 pages. If necessary, find ways to cut the examples or text. If you
   have an accompanying website for the system where some examples are stored, please mention it.

The paper is 35 pages using the supplied Wiley LaTeX macros.


Referee(s)' Comments to Author:

Reviewing: 1

   Most of the content in Section 10 RELATED WORK appears to belong to Section 1 INTRODUCTION as a
   Subsection or as a new Section after Section 1. (Please also see #4.1 below.) Remaining
   discussion that cannot be moved earlier can become a DISCUSSION Section or a Subsection within
   the last Section of the paper.

Sometimes it is appropriate to put related work at the start of a paper and sometimes at the
end. For this paper, it seems appropriate to put the related work at the end of the paper. The
purpose of the related work in this paper is two fold: to introduce prior work and to contrast it
with Cforall.  Only at the end of the paper does the reader have sufficient knowledge about Cforall
to make detailed contrasts with other programming languages possible. If the related work is moved
to the end of the introduction, the reader knows nothing about Cforall so talking about other
programming languages in isolation makes little sense, especially non-C-related languages, like
Java, Go, Rust, Haskell. We see no easy way to separate the related work into a general discussion
at the start and a specific discussion at the end. We explicitly attempt to deal with the reader's
anticipation at the end of the introduction:

 Finally, it is impossible to describe a programming language without usages before definitions.
 Therefore, syntax and semantics appear before explanations; hence, patience is necessary until
 details are presented.


   2.1 More information should be moved from the text and added to Figure 10 and Table 2 so that
   readers can understand the comparison quickly. Imagine a reader read the summary and jump
   directly to these two display elements. Questions would be raised about the binary size and pop
   pair result of Cforall and it would take time to find answers in the text.

This suggestion is an alternative writing style. The experiment is complex enough that it is
unlikely a reader could jump to the table/graph and understand the experiment without putting a
substantive amount of the text from Section 9 into the table and figure, which the reader then has
to read anyway.  In fact, we prefer a writing style where the reader does not have to look at the
table/figure to understand the experiment and the results, i.e., the table/figure are only there to
complement the discussion.


   2.2 The pronunciation of ("C-for-all") should be provided in the summary (page 1 line 22) so that
   people not having an access to the full-text can see it.

Done.


   2.3 Error comment in the code should be written with the same capitalization and it will be
   helpful if you say specifically compilation error or runtime error. (Please see attached
   annotated manuscript.)

Fixed. All errors in the paper are compilation errors because they are related to the type system.


   2.4 It is possible to provide a bit more information in Appendix A e.g. how many lines/bytes of
   code and some details about software/hardware can be added/moved here. The aim is to provide
   sufficient information for readers to reproduce the results and to appreciate the context of the
   comparison.

Table 2 indicates the source-code size in lines of code. The third paragraph of Section 9 gives
precise details of the software/hardware used in the experiments.

   3. Practical information about the work

   There are three separate pieces of information on pages 2 ("All features discussed in this paper
   are working, unless otherwise stated as under construction."),

This sentence is replace with:

 All languages features discussed in this paper are working, except some advanced exception-handling
 features.

and Section 5.4 Exception Handling states:

 The following framework for Cforall exception handling is in place, excluding some runtime
 type-information and virtual functions.


   page 4 ("Under construction is a mechanism to distribute...")

The feature on page 4 is now complete.


   and page 33 ("There is ongoing work on a wide range ... ")

This sentence is replace to indicate the ongoing work is future work.

 While all examples in the paper compile and run, a public beta-release of Cforall will take 6-8
 months to reduce compilation time, provide better debugging, and add a few more libraries.  There
 is also new work on a number of Cforall features, including arrays with size, runtime
 type-information, virtual functions, user-defined conversions, and modules.


   My recommendation is to move them to an appendix so that the length is preserved.

There is nothing to move into an appendix, except 3 sentences. We do not intend to discuss these
items in this paper.


   3.1 Any under construction work (only small part of page 4) should not be mingled into the main
   part of the manuscript.

See above.


   3.2 Instructions on how to access/use the working functionality of Cforall should be given.

We will indicate release of Cforall in a public location, when we believe the code base is
acceptable. In the interim, we have made public all the experimental code from section 9, and there
is a reference in the paper to access this code. We can make a private beta-copy of Cforall
available to the SP&E editor for distribution to the referees so they can verify our claims.

   3.3 Planned work should be given a specific time of completion/release not just "8-12 months".

Software development is not a rigorous engineering discipline. Given our small research
development-team and the size of the project, we cannot give a specific time for completion of
anything associated with the project. Having said that, we have reduced our expected time for
Cforall release to 6-8 months as work is progressing well.


   4.1 The impression after reading Section 1 INTRODUCTION is that the referencing is poor. It is
   not until Section 10 RELATED WORK where majority of the prior literature are discussed. Please
   consider moving the content and improve citations - at least cite all main variations of C
   languages.

See point 1.


   4.2 I also would like to see citations at these specific places: Page 2 after Phil Karlton, page
   22 after const hell problem.

The Phil-Karlton quote is an urban legend without a specific academic citation:

  https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/19836/has-phil-karlton-ever-said-there-are-only-two-hard-things-in-computer-science

The term "const hell" is replaced with "const poisoning" with a citation.


   5.1 Footnotes and citations will need to have different schemes - number and perhaps letter.

Switched to letters. SP&E uses symbol footnotes but this macros fails with their macros:

 \renewcommand*{\thefootnote}{\fnsymbol{footnote}}


   5.2 Many references are not properly formatted e.g. date is incomplete, extra/missing white
   spaces, extra dots, use of page number or section number as part of superscript ref
   number. Please refer to attached document.

Agreed. The bibtex BST macros are at fault. I have fixed some issues but I cannot fix them all as my
BST macro-knowledge is limited.


   5.3 Typos:
   - Page 3 "eager" should be "earlier"

Fixed.

   - Page 4 "vals" should be "arr"

Actually it is "vals", and the example is changed so it is clear why.

   - Page 21 "than" should be "then"

Fixed.


   6. Conflict of interest
   I see that the work is partially supported by Huawei. Perhaps statement about any presence or
   absence of conflicts of interest should be explicitly added. Please get a clear direction on this
   from the editor of the journal.

The paper now states the project is open-source, hence there is no conflict of interest with the
funding received from Huawei.


Reviewing: 2

Comments to the Author

   Overloading requires the compiler to mangle a function's signature into its name in the object
   file.  I'm pretty sure that this will complicate the build process of mixed Cforall/C projects.

There is no complexity with building Cforall/C programs, and there is an existence proof because C++
has name mangling for overloading and has no problem interacting with C.


   I found the evaluation underwhelming.  There were only ~200 LoC ported from C to Cforall.  This
   is too less to encounter potential caveats Cforall's type system might impose.

We have clarified that the evaluation is not for the type system, but rather the underlying
implementation approach for the parametric polymorphism. Section 9 now starts:

 Cforall adds parametric polymorphism to C.  A runtime evaluation is performed to compare the cost
 of alternative styles of polymorphism.  The goal is to compare just the underlying mechanism for
 implementing different kinds of polymorphism.

and ends with:

 We conjecture these results scale across most generic data-types as the underlying polymorphic
 implement is constant.
 

   Also, how is the compiler implemented?  I guess, Cforall is a source-to-source compiler (from
   Cforall to C).  But this is left in the dark.  What features are actually implemented?

The following paragraph has been added to the introduction to address this comment:

 All languages features discussed in this paper are working, except some advanced exception-handling
 features.  Not discussed in this paper are the integrated concurrency-constructs and user-level
 threading-library~\cite{Delisle18}.  Cforall is an open-source project implemented as an
 source-to-source translator from Cforall to the gcc-dialect of C~\cite{GCCExtensions}, allowing it
 to leverage the portability and code optimizations provided by gcc, meeting goals (1)--(3).
 Ultimately, a compiler is necessary for advanced features and optimal performance.  The Cforall
 translator is 200+ files and 46,000+ lines of code written in C/C++.  Starting with a translator
 versus a compiler makes it easier and faster to generate and debug C object-code rather than
 intermediate, assembler or machine code.  The translator design is based on the visitor pattern,
 allowing multiple passes over the abstract code-tree, which works well for incrementally adding new
 feature through additional visitor passes.  At the heart of the translator is the type resolver,
 which handles the polymorphic routine/type overload-resolution.  The Cforall runtime system is 100+
 files and 11,000+ lines of code, written in Cforall.  Currently, the Cforall runtime is the largest
 user of Cforall providing a vehicle to test the language features and implementation.  The Cforall
 tests are 290+ files and 27,000+ lines of code.  The tests illustrate syntactic and semantic
 features in Cforall, plus a growing number of runtime benchmarks.  The tests check for correctness
 and are used for daily regression testing of commits (3800+).


   Furthermore, the article lacks some related work.  Many proposed features are present in
   functional languages such as Haskell, ML etc.  In particular, the dealing of parametric
   polymorphism reminds me of Haskell.

The following paragraph has been added at the start of Section 10.1:

 ML~\cite{ML} was the first language to support parametric polymorphism.  Like Cforall, it supports
 universal type parameters, but not the use of assertions and traits to constrain type arguments.
 Haskell~\cite{Haskell10} combines ML-style polymorphism, polymorphic data types, and type inference
 with the notion of type classes, collections of overloadable methods that correspond in intent to
 traits in Cforall.  Unlike Cforall, Haskell requires an explicit association between types and
 their classes that specifies the implementation of operations.  These associations determine the
 functions that are assertion arguments for particular combinations of class and type, in contrast
 to Cforall where the assertion arguments are selected at function call sites based upon the set of
 operations in scope at that point.  Haskell also severely restricts the use of overloading: an
 overloaded name can only be associated with a single class, and methods with overloaded names can
 only be defined as part of instance declarations.


   Cforall's approach to tuples is also quite similar to many functional languages.

At the end of Section 10.2, we state:

 Tuples are a fundamental abstraction in most functional programming languages, such as Standard ML,
 Haskell}, and Scala, which decompose tuples using pattern matching.


From: Judith Bishop <judithbishop@outlook.com>
To: "Peter A. Buhr" <pabuhr@uwaterloo.ca>
Subject: RE: Software: Practice and Experience - Decision on Manuscript ID
 SPE-18-0065
Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 16:45:51 +0000
Accept-Language: em-US

Hi Peter

Great to hear from you. I am also glad your paper got through, as it is in the
mainline of the SPE scope.

It is important to mention that the software is open source. People really
value that. In the acknowledgements, you can refer to Huawei for funding. It is
quite normal to have industrial funding, and in fact it is a plus.

I think that sorts out the comment from the referee.

Looking forward to your revised submission.

Kind regards

Judith Bishop
Extraordinary Professor, Computer Science
Stellenbosch University, South Africa
082 301 5220 / 021 671 5133
judithbishop@outlook.com     LinkedIn

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter A. Buhr <pabuhr@uwaterloo.ca> 
Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2018 6:25 PM
To: judithbishop@outlook.com
Cc: a3moss@uwaterloo.ca; rschlunt@uwaterloo.ca
Subject: Re: Software: Practice and Experience - Decision on Manuscript ID SPE-18-0065

Hi Judy! Hope all is well.

We are over-the-moon to get our paper accepted at SP&E, and we are actively
working on your and the referee's comments.

One comment where we need assistance is:

  7. A statement about any presence or absence of conflicts of interest with
     Huawei should be explicitly added.

We forgotten to mention in the paper that our project is open-source. So Huawei
was funding an open-source project. In fact, the Huawei funding ends soon, so
there will be no direct affiliation in a couple of months, although there are a
few people at Huawei who remain very interested in the project.

So does stating that the Cforall project is an open-source project deal with
the issue of conflict of interest?