TITLE: Taking Computer Science Off the Beaten Track
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: September 26, 2011  9:02 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
I love this idea: a workshop at
<A HREF="http://www.cse.psu.edu/popl/12/">
   POPL 2012</A>,
the premier programming languages research conference, called
<A HREF="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/obt/">
   Off the Beaten Track</A>.
Here is the gist.

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
Programming language researchers have the principles, tools,
algorithms and abstractions to solve all kinds of problems, in
all areas of computer science.  However, identifying and
evaluating new problems, particularly those that lie outside
the typical core PL problems we all know and love, can be a
significant challenge.  Hence, the goal of this workshop is to
identify and discuss problems that do not often show up in our
top conferences, but where programming language researchers can
make a substantial impact.  The hope is that by holding such a
forum and associating it directly with a top conference like
POPL, we can slowly start to increase the diversity of problems
that are studied by PL researchers and that by doing so we will
increase the impact that our community has on the world.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

I remember when I first started running across papers written by
physicists on networks in social science and open-source software.
Why were physicists writing these papers?  They are out of their
league.  In fact, though they were something else: curious, and
equipped with good tools for studying the problems.  Good for
them -- and good fro the rest of us. too, as they contributed to
our understanding of how the world works.

Computer science has even better tools and methods for studying
all manners of problems and systems, especially the more dynamic
systems.  Our ability to reify the language of any domain and
then write programs to implement the semantics of the domain is
one step up from the models that most mathematicians and
physicists bring to the table.

Sometimes we forget the power we have in language.  As Tim Ottinger
<A HREF="https://twitter.com/#!/tottinge/status/118416072801136640">
   tweeted today</A>,
"I think people have lost the idea that OO builds the language
you implement in, as well as the product."  We forget to use our
own ability to create and use language even in an approach built
on the premise!  And of course we can go farther when we build
architectures and virtual machines for domain-specific languages,
rather than living inside a relatively restrictive model like
Java.

The organizers of Off the Beaten Track remind us to think about
the wealth of "principles, tools, algorithms, and abstractions"
we possess and can bring to bear on problems far beyond the
narrow technical area of programming languages research, from
the natural sciences to art and music, from economics and the
law to linguistics and education.  They even acknowledge that
we don't always appreciate the diversity in our own research
field and so encourage submissions on "unusual compilers" and
"underrepresented programming languages".

The last sentence in the passage above expresses an important
ultimate goal: to increase the impact the programming languages
community has on the world.  I heartily support this goal and
suggest that it is an important one not only for programming
languages researchers.  It is essential that many more of us
in computer science look off the beaten track for ways to apply
what we have learned to problems far beyond our own borders.
If we start focusing on problems that matter to other people,
problems that matter, we might just solve them.

My favorite line in the Off the Beaten Track home page is the
last item in its bullet list of potential topic areas:
<B>Surprise us.</B>.  Indeed.  Surprise us.
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