The linear bestiary of François Pottier

Pottier (2007). Wandering through linear types, capabilities, and regions. Survey talk given at INRIA, Rocquencourt, France, May 2007.

Following Ehud's prompt, I again recommend it as a tutorial on the relationship between such things as linear&affine logic, resource logics, effect-typing systems, and the idea of observably pure function definitions in stateful languages.

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Thanks. This is a very

Thanks. This is a very useful set of slides.

I wish I had read it...

...12 years ago, when a simpler and more naïve edition of myself wrote my first research proposal. It broke just about every PL research proposal writing rule I now know. Two in particular make me wince on re-reading:

  1. Never make the focus of your proposal be to develop a programming language. At least I haven't noticed anyone propose the name Concurrent Algol for their language before I did, although Brookes (1993/1996), 'Full abstraction for a shared variable parallel language' might easily have called its formalism that.
  2. Pay at least a little attention to what people who haven't put much effort into understanding your work might make of what you write. For instance, the pervasive assumption that continuations provide an adequate semantic basis for treating concurrency might not strike every possible referee as obviously warranted.

See how many other broken rules you can spot.

Notation...

...any quick introductions to the notation he is using?