Back from San Diego

Last week I returned from a great trip to San Diego where I visited the FCRC Conference. I attended the History of Programming Language conference (HOPL-III), the Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI), and finally I presented a paper at the Programming Language and Analysis for Security workshop, which was the main purpose of my trip.

The HOPL conference was a big hit, many good talks on why or why not succes of programming languages like AppleScript, Lua, Modula-2 and Oberon, ZPL, Erlang, C++, Haskel and Beta. For the first time I saw Niklaus Wirth the maker of Pascal, the first programming language I learned. He seemed a bit uncontent with the present state of programming language too much abstraction and too little focus on fast implementations. I disagree. Raising the level of abstraction is natural and good programming style, the compiler should do the hard work of optimizing the code.

PLDI was a good experience many good presentations. There where a lot of presentations after 10 hours of talks my head was spinning and dangrously close to mental overload. I meet a lot of people doing interesting research nice to experience the state of art this close.

PLAS was a good experience the presentation went well, and the questions easy to answer. The other presentations where interesting so it was a good day.

San Diego is a nice city. It felt like a good place to be, especially the Gas lamp quater was nice. Lots of resteurants and shops. And the weather was great, 25-35 degress celcious and a nice refreshing wind.

I have placed some pictures from my trip, see the menu on the right and select pictures. The hotel was fine but the decoration sucks big time looks like something some the early 80's :)