Ignore:
Timestamp:
Mar 11, 2019, 11:13:09 PM (5 years ago)
Author:
Aaron Moss <a3moss@…>
Branches:
ADT, aaron-thesis, arm-eh, ast-experimental, cleanup-dtors, enum, forall-pointer-decay, jacob/cs343-translation, jenkins-sandbox, master, new-ast, new-ast-unique-expr, pthread-emulation, qualifiedEnum
Children:
9d9a451
Parents:
834f634
Message:

thesis: finish second draft

Location:
doc/theses/aaron_moss_PhD/phd
Files:
2 edited

Legend:

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  • doc/theses/aaron_moss_PhD/phd/conclusion.tex

    r834f634 re402bbc  
    33Decades after its first standardization, the C language remains a widely-used tool and a vital part of the software development landscape.
    44The \CFA{} language under development at the University of Waterloo represents an evolutionary modernization of C with expressive modern language features paired with strong C backwards-compatibility.
    5 This thesis has contributed to those project goals in a variety of ways, including the addition of a generic types language feature (Chapter~\ref{generic-chap}) and refinement of the \CFA{} overload selection rules to produce a more expressive and intuitive model (Section~\ref{conv-cost-sec}).
     5This thesis has contributed to these project goals in a variety of ways, including the addition of a generic-types language feature (Chapter~\ref{generic-chap}) and refinement of the \CFA{} overload selection rules to produce a more expressive and intuitive model (Section~\ref{conv-cost-sec}).
    66Based on the technical contribution of the resolver prototype system (Section~\ref{rp-features-sec}), I have also made significant improvements to \CFA{} compilation performance, including un-combined bottom-up expression traversal (Section~\ref{arg-parm-matching-sec}), deferred-cached assertion satisfaction (Section~\ref{assn-sat-sec}), and a novel persistent union-find type environment data structure (Section~\ref{env-persistent-union-find}).
    77The combination of these practical improvements and added features significantly improve the viability of \CFA{} as a practical programming language.
    88
    9 Further improvements to \CFA{} are still possible, however.
     9Further improvements to the \CFA{} type-system are still possible, however.
    1010One area suggested by this work is development of a scheme for user-defined conversions; to integrate properly with the \CFA{} conversion model, there would need to be a distinction between safe and unsafe conversions, and possibly a way to denote conversions as explicit-only or non-chainable.
    1111Another place for ongoing effort is improvement of compilation performance; I believe the most promising direction for that is rebuilding the \CFA{} compiler on a different framework than Bilson's \CFACC{}.
  • doc/theses/aaron_moss_PhD/phd/frontpgs.tex

    r834f634 re402bbc  
    137137        This thesis also presents a number of smaller refinements to the \CFA{} overload resolution rules, each of which improves the expressivity or intuitive nature of the language.
    138138       
    139         This thesis also includes a number of practical improvements to \CFA{} compilation performance, focused on the expression resolution pass which is the main bottleneck.
    140         These include better algorithms for argument-parameter matching and type assertion satisfaction, as well as a new type environment data structure based on a novel variant of union-find.
    141         The compilation performance improvements have all been experimentally validated with a new prototype system which encapsulates the key aspects of the \CFA{} language; this prototype is a promising basis for future research, and is a technical contribution of this work.
     139        This thesis also includes a number of practical improvements to \CFA{} compilation performance, focused on the expression resolution pass, which is the main bottleneck.
     140        These include better algorithms for argument-parameter matching and type assertion satisfaction, as well as a new type-environment data-structure based on a novel variant of union-find.
     141        The compilation performance improvements have all been experimentally validated with a new prototype system that encapsulates the key aspects of the \CFA{} language; this prototype is a promising basis for future research and a technical contribution of this work.
    142142
    143143\cleardoublepage
     
    150150Though a doctoral thesis is an individual project, I could not have completed it without the help and support of many members of my community.
    151151This thesis would not exist in the form it does without the mentorship of my advisor, Peter Buhr, who has ably led the \CFA{} team while giving me both the advantage of his decades of experience and the freedom to follow my own interests.
     152
    152153My work on \CFA{} does not exist in a vaccuum, and it has been a pleasure and a privilege to collaborate with the members of the \CFA{} team: Andrew Beach, Richard Bilson, Michael Brooks, Bryan Chan, Thierry Delisle, Glen Ditchfield, Brice Dobry, Rob Schluntz, and others.
    153154I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the National Science and Engineering Council of Canada and Huawei Ltd.\ for this project.
    154 I would also like to thank of my thesis committee, Doug Lea, Ond\v{r}ej Lhot\a'ak, Gregor Richards, and Werner Dietl, for the time and effort they have invested in providing constructive feedback to refine this work.
     155I would also like to thank of my thesis committee, Werner Dietl, Doug Lea, Ond\v{r}ej Lhot\a'ak, and Gregor Richards, for the time and effort they have invested in providing constructive feedback to refine this work.
    155156I am indebted to Peter van Beek and Ian Munro for their algorithmic expertise and willingness to share their time with me.
    156157I have far too many colleagues in the Programming Languages Group and School of Computer Science to name, but I deeply appreciate their camaradarie; specifically with regard to the production of this thesis, I would like to thank Nathan Fish for recommending my writing soundtrack, and Sharon Choy for her unfailing supply of encouraging rabbit animations.
     158
    157159Finally, to all my friends and family who have supported me and made Kitchener-Waterloo home these past seven years, thank you, I could not have done it without you; most especially, Christina Moss, you are the best of wives and best of women, your support has kept me going through the ups and downs of research, and your partnership is key to all my successes.
    158160
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