SPLASH 2023
Sun 22 - Fri 27 October 2023 Cascais, Portugal

Onward! is a premier multidisciplinary conference focused on everything to do with programming and software: including processes, methods, languages, communities and applications. Onward! is more radical, more visionary and more open than other conferences to ideas that are well-argued but not yet proven. We welcome different ways of thinking about, approaching and reporting on programming language and software engineering research.

The Character of Onward!

Onward! Papers is looking for grand visions and new paradigms that could make a big difference in how we will one day build software. But it is not looking for research-as-usual papers—conferences like OOPSLA are the place for that. Those conferences require rigorous validation such as theorems or empirical experiments, which are necessary for scientific progress, but which typically preclude discussion of early-stage ideas. Onward! papers must also supply some degree of validation because mere speculation is not a good basis for progress. However, Onward! accepts less rigorous methods of validation such as compelling arguments, exploratory implementations, and substantial examples. The use of worked-out examples to support new ideas is strongly encouraged.

Dates
Tracks
Plenary
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Wed 25 Oct

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09:00 - 10:30
KeynoteOnward! Papers at Room VII
Chair(s): Tijs van der Storm CWI & University of Groningen
09:00
90m
Keynote
Creating a learnable and inclusive programming languageKeynote
Onward! Papers
K: Felienne Hermans Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
10:30 - 11:00
Coffee BreakCatering at Gallery
11:00 - 12:30
Beyond Text? Onward! Papers at Room VII
Chair(s): L. Thomas van Binsbergen University of Amsterdam
11:00
30m
Talk
Time-awareness in Object-exploration Tools: Toward In Situ Omniscient DebuggingRemote
Onward! Papers
Christoph Thiede Hasso Plattner Institute, University of Potsdam, Germany, Marcel Taeumel University of Potsdam; Hasso Plattner Institute, Robert Hirschfeld University of Potsdam; Hasso Plattner Institute
Link to publication DOI
11:30
30m
Talk
Code Merging Using Transformations and Member Identity
Onward! Papers
André R. Teles University Institute of Lisbon, André L. Santos University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal
12:00
30m
Talk
Scalable Spreadsheet-driven End-User Applications with Incremental Computation
Onward! Papers
Sean Hadar Technion, Shachar Itzhaky Technion
12:30 - 14:00
14:00 - 15:30
Beyond Language?Onward! Papers at Room VII
Chair(s): Alex Potanin Australian National University
14:00
30m
Talk
Could No-Code be Code? -- Toward a No-Code Programming Language for Citizen Developers
Onward! Papers
David H. Lorenz Open University of Israel, Assaf Zeira Too Software
Link to publication DOI Pre-print
14:30
30m
Talk
Toward Programming Languages for Reasoning -- Humans, Symbolic Systems, and AI Agents
Onward! Papers
Mark Marron University of Kentucky
15:00
30m
Talk
Trustworthy Formal Natural Language Specifications
Onward! Papers
Colin Gordon Drexel University, Sergey Matskevich Drexel University, USA
15:30 - 16:00
Coffee BreakCatering at Gallery
16:00 - 17:30
Essays 1Onward! Essays at Room VII
Chair(s): Matthew Dinmore Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
16:00
45m
Talk
Will code remain a relevant user interface for end-user programming with generative AI models?
Onward! Essays
Advait Sarkar Microsoft Research and University of Cambridge
Link to publication DOI
16:45
45m
Talk
programmingLanguage as Language;
Onward! Essays
James Noble Research & Programming, Robert Biddle Carleton University
Link to publication DOI File Attached
17:45 - 19:30
ReceptionCatering at Gallery
17:45
1h45m
Dinner
Reception
Catering

Thu 26 Oct

Displayed time zone: Lisbon change

09:30 - 10:30
Keynote 2OOPSLA at Room I
Chair(s): Mira Mezini TU Darmstadt
09:30
60m
Keynote
Hydroflow: A Compiler Target for Fast, Correct Distributed ProgramsKeynote
OOPSLA
10:30 - 11:00
Coffee BreakCatering at Gallery
11:00 - 12:30
Beyond Programming? Onward! Papers at Room VII
Chair(s): Riemer van Rozen CWI
11:00
30m
Talk
Cloning And Beyond: A Quantum Solution to Duplicate Code
Onward! Papers
Samyak Jhaveri UCI, Alberto Krone-Martins UC Irvine, Crista Lopes University of California, Irvine
11:30
30m
Talk
Towards an Industrial Stateful Software Rejuvenation Toolchain Using Model LearningRemote
Onward! Papers
Mathijs Schuts Philips; Radboud University Nijmegen, Jozef Hooman TNO; Radboud University Nijmegen
12:00
30m
Talk
Concept-Centric Software Development: An Experience Report
Onward! Papers
Peter Wilczynski Palantir Technologies, Taylor Gregoire-Wright Independent consultant, Daniel Jackson MIT
12:30 - 14:00
14:00 - 15:30
Essays 2Onward! Essays at Room VII
Chair(s): James Noble Research & Programming
14:00
45m
Talk
Sharing a Perspective on the lambda-Calculus
Onward! Essays
Beniamino Accattoli Inria & Ecole Polytechnique
Link to publication DOI
14:45
45m
Talk
Whither Problem-Solving Environments?
Onward! Essays
Matthew Dinmore Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory
Link to publication DOI File Attached
15:30 - 16:00
Coffee BreakCatering at Gallery
17:30 - 17:45
Sponsored TalksSponsored Talks at Room I
Chair(s): Bor-Yuh Evan Chang University of Colorado at Boulder; Amazon
17:30
15m
Talk
Programming Languages at Huawei
Sponsored Talks
A: Dan Ghica Huawei

Call for Papers

Selection Process

Onward! papers are peer-reviewed in a double blind manner. Accepted papers will appear in the Onward! Proceedings in the ACM Digital Library. Submissions will be judged on the potential impact of the ideas and the quality of the presentation.

Onward! Papers follows a two-phase review process. This enables us to welcome papers that contain promising ideas and have the potential to meet the conference’s standards, but which may fall short of this in the initial submission. At the end of the first phase, all papers will be either: accepted normally; or asked to perform certain required revisions; or rejected outright. The authors of papers asked to perform revisions will get one month to complete the revisions, at which point the original reviewers decide on the final acceptance of the paper. All papers will thus remain under submission until the authors receive notification of acceptance or rejection.

We expect the typical strong submission to be accepted normally, with authors expected—as is conventional—to revise the paper using the program committee’s feedback.

The program committee may identify certain papers with promising ideas as needing important revisions. These papers will be handled in one of two ways. They may be assigned a shepherd, in the tradition followed by numerous conferences. Otherwise, they will be given a concrete set of goals to accomplish in the revision. In the latter case, the second submission must then be accompanied by a cover letter mapping the revision requests to specific parts of the paper; the program committee will use the cover letter and revised submission to arrive at a final decision.

The second phase will only be used to elevate promising papers to the conference’s standard, not to require additional work of papers already deemed up-to-standard.

Instructions for Authors

For fairness reasons, all submitted papers should conform to the formatting instructions (see below). Submissions that violate these instructions may be rejected without review, at the discretion of the Program Chair.

Submission Site

https://onward2023papers.hotcrp.com/

Concurrent Submissions

Papers must describe unpublished work that is not currently submitted for publication elsewhere as described by SIGPLAN’s Republication Policy. Submitters should also be aware of ACM’s Policy and Procedures on Plagiarism.

Policy on Double Blind Review

Onward! 2023 is using a double-blind submission process. This means that authors will not know who reviewed their papers, and reviewers will not know who authored the papers they review. The aim of double-blind is to treat all papers with minimal bias. Authors must take the following actions to prepare their papers for double-blind reviewing:

  • Remove identifying information (names, institutions, etc) from the author block of the first page of the paper.
  • To the extent possible, when authors cite their own work, they should refer to it in the third person.
  • To the extent possible, authors should remove any other potentially identifying information, such as acknowledgements.

After submitting their review, reviewers will be able to see author identities. When the paper is accepted for publication, the camera-ready copy must not be blinded.

See OOPSLA’s FAQ on double-blind reviewing for more information. Please contact the PC chair if you have any questions.

Policy on Authorship Changes

Any addition of authors after initial submission of a paper must be cleared with the PC chair. Authors are very strongly advised to list all authors prior to initial submission as the addition of authors may create new conflicts with the PC. In all cases, the PC chair must be provided with a rationale. The PC chair has the authority to reject any requested change.

Format

Submissions should use ACM SIGPLAN Conference acmart Format, sigplan sub-format and 10 point font. All submissions should be in PDF format.

If you are formatting your paper using LaTeX, you will need to use the sigplan, anonymous and review options. Note that by default the SIGPLAN template produces two-column, 9 point papers, but you will need to you will need to set the 10pt option in the \documentclass command. If you are formatting your paper using Word, you may wish to use the provided Word template that supports this font size. Please include page numbers in your submission. Setting the review option in the LaTeX \documentclass command generates page numbers, and the anonymous option hides author names. Please also ensure that your submission is legible when printed on a black and white printer. In particular, please check that colors remain distinct and font sizes are legible.

Page Limit

To ensure that papers stay focused on their core contributions, the main part of the paper (excluding bibliographic references) should be no longer than 13 pages. There is no page limit for bibliographic references and appendices, and, therefore, for the overall submission. However, reviewers are not obligated to read the appendices, so the main part of the paper should be self contained. If the paper is accepted, the final submission will be limited to 17 pages. (The 13-page limit for the main body of the paper no longer applies.)

Publication (Digital Library Early Access Warning)

AUTHORS TAKE NOTE: The official publication date is the date the proceedings are made available in the ACM Digital Library. This date may be up to two weeks prior to the first day of the conference. The official publication date affects the deadline for any patent filings related to published work.

More Information

For additional information, clarification, or answers to questions please contact the Program Chair via onward@splashcon.org

Questions? Use the SPLASH Onward! Papers contact form.