Programming Languages & Security Reading Group at IMDEA

What it is: the reading group is a bi-weekly meeting to discuss papers in PL, security and related areas.

How it works: we meet on Fridays at 16:00 in the meeting room 315 to discuss the scheduled paper of the day. Each scheduled paper has a person in charge of leading the discussion, who is supposed to have read the paper. Other participants are highly encouraged to at least skim the paper, but it is optional, not mandatory.

Who can participate: anyone who is in the institute on the meeting day.

How scheduling works: to schedule a paper for the discussion, we choose one from the queue of proposed papers. To propose a paper send an email to pl[AT]software.imdea.org.

Proposed Papers

Presented Papers

Format

Ideally, everyone attending a meeting should leave with good understanding of what the paper was about, even if they have not read it fully. Thus the presenters are expected to cover the following basic points:

• What is the problem that the paper is trying to solve?
• Why is that problem important?
• What is the main idea used to solve the problem?
• If the paper is old, what impact did it have?

We recommend to cover these points by first going through the paper structurally, briefly summarizing each section. Deeper technical discussion should follow the high level summary of whole paper.

Guidelines for presenter

1. Make sure that you can give the key ideas of the paper and present the big picture in the first 45-60 minutes of the session. Thus everyone should be able to understand the problem, the context, and the solution of the paper. You can mention what else it contains that you did not have time to properly cover.

   Aim to extract and present the key ideas; omit non-crucial detail, keep high-level view. If the paper cannot be aptly summarized in 45-60 minutes, or is too technical, it may be not the best fit for the reading group.

2. In this summary discussion, moderate the questions from the participants. If a question goes into a deep detail, and does not directly address key ideas and intuitions, then suggest to return to this question after the high-level presentation.

3. Prepare a short summary of the paper and its sections. Mention the problem, its significance, key ideas of the approach, its limitations. You can also briefly mention the interesting contents of each section. Invite the participants to quietly read the summary in the beginning of the session.

   For summary, you may use bullet-point style to extract key details, or use any other format you find suitable, as long as it gives an apt summary. For example, feel free to include typing rules, interesting figures, or any other relevant key material.

   To prepare the summary, we suggest a collaborative online tool https://hackmd.io/, and will send you a link to a new shared sheet once your proposed paper is scheduled. We encourage you to use the summary to help guide the discussion. These notes will be kept for further reference on the webpage.