Higher-order, Typed, Inferred, Strict: ACM SIGPLAN ML Family Workshop
Thursday September 22, 2016, Nara, Japan
(immediately following ICFP and preceding OCaml Users and Developers Workshop)

Call for papers: http://www.mlworkshop.org/ml2016/

ML is a very large family of programming languages that includes Standard
ML, OCaml, F#, SML#, Manticore, MetaOCaml, JoCaml, Alice ML, Dependent ML,
Flow Caml, and many others. All ML languages share several fundamental
traits, besides a good deal of syntax. They are higher-order, strict, mostly
pure, and typed, with algebraic and other data types. Their type systems are
derived from Hindley-Milner. The development of these languages has inspired
a significant body of computer science research and influenced the design of
many other programming languages, including Haskell, Scala and Clojure,
Rust, ATS and many others.

ML workshops have been held in affiliation with ICFP continuously since
2005. This workshop specifically aims to recognise the entire extended ML
family and to provide a forum for presenting and discussing common issues,
both practical (compilation techniques, implementations of concurrency and
parallelism, programming for the Web) and theoretical (fancy types, module
systems, metaprogramming). The scope of the workshop includes all aspects of
the design, semantics, theory, application, implementation, and teaching of
the members of the ML family. We also encourage presentations from related
languages (such as Scala, Rust, Nemerle, ATS, etc.), to exchange experience
of further developing ML ideas.

The ML family workshop will be held in close coordination with the OCaml
Users and Developers Workshop.

Scope
-----

We acknowledge the whole breadth of the ML family and aim to include
languages that are closely related (although not by blood), such as Rust,
ATS, Scala, and Typed Clojure. Those languages have implemented and
investigated run-time and type system choices that may be worth considering
for OCaml, F# and other ML languages. We also hope that the exposure to the
state of the art ML might favourably influence those related
languages. Specifically, we seek research presentations on topics including
(but not limited to)

* Language design: abstraction, higher forms of polymorphism, concurrency,
distribution and mobility, staging, extensions for semi-structured data,
generic programming, object systems, etc.

* Implementation: compilers, interpreters, type checkers, partial
evaluators, runtime systems, garbage collectors, foreign function
interfaces, etc.

* Type systems: inference, effects, modules, contracts, specifications and
assertions, dynamic typing, error reporting, etc.

* Applications: case studies, experience reports, pearls, etc.

* Environments: libraries, tools, editors, debuggers, cross-language
interoperability, functional data structures, etc.

* Semantics: operational and denotational semantics, program equivalence,
parametricity, mechanization, etc.

Four kinds of submissions will be accepted: Research Presentations,
Experience Reports, Demos and Informed Positions.

* Research Presentations: Research presentations should describe new
ideas, experimental results, or significant advances in ML-related
projects. We especially encourage presentations that describe work in
progress, that outline a future research agenda, or that encourage
lively discussion. These presentations should be structured in a way
which can be, at least in part, of interest to (advanced) users.

* Experience Reports: Users are invited to submit Experience Reports about
their use of ML and related languages. These presentations do not need
to contain original research but they should tell an interesting story
to researchers or other advanced users, such as an innovative or
unexpected use of advanced features or a description of the challenges
they are facing or attempting to solve.

* Demos: Live demonstrations or short tutorials should show new
developments, interesting prototypes, or work in progress, in the form
of tools, libraries, or applications built on or related to ML and
related languages. (You will need to provide all the hardware and
software required for your demo; the workshop organisers are only able
to provide a projector.)

* Informed Positions: A justified argument for or against a language
feature. The argument must be substantiated, either theoretically
(e.g. by a demonstration of (un)soundness, an inference algorithm, a
complexity analysis), empirically or by substantial experience. Personal
experience is accepted as justification so long as it is extensive and
illustrated with concrete examples.

Format
------

The ML 2016 workshop will continue the informal approach used since
2010. Presentations are selected from submitted abstracts. There are no
published proceedings, so contributions may be submitted for publication
elsewhere. We hope that this format will encourage the presentation of
exciting (if unpolished) research and deliver a lively workshop atmosphere.

Each presentation should take 20-25 minutes, except demos, which should take
10-15 minutes. The exact time will be decided based on the number of
accepted submissions. The presentations will likely be recorded.

Post-proceedings
----------------

ML 2016 is an informal workshop without proceedings. We are planning to
publish a post-proceedings and to invite interested authors of selected
presentations to expand their abstracts for inclusion.

Coordination with the OCaml Users and Developers Workshop
---------------------------------------------------------

The OCaml workshop is seen as more practical and is dedicated in significant
part to OCaml community building and the development of the OCaml system. In
contrast, the ML family workshop is not focused on any language in
particular, is more research-oriented, and deals with general issues of
ML-style programming and type systems. Yet there is an overlap, which we are
keen to explore in various ways. The authors who feel their submission fits
both workshops are encouraged to mention it at submission time or contact
the Programme Chairs.

Submission details
------------------

Submissions should be at most two pages, in PDF format, and printable on US
Letter or A4 sized paper. A submission should have a synopsis (2-3 lines)
and a body between 1 and 2 pages, in one- or two-column layout. The synopsis
should be suitable for inclusion in the workshop programme.

Submissions must be uploaded to the workshop submission website at:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ml2016

before the submission deadline (Friday 10th June, 2016). If you have a
question concerning the scope of the workshop or the submission
process, please contact the programme chair.

Important dates
---------------

Friday 10th June (any time zone) Abstract submission deadline
Monday 18th July Author notification
Thursday 22nd September 2016 ML Family Workshop

Programme committee
-------------------

Nada Amin (EPFL, Switzerland)
Kenichi Asai (Ochanomizu University, Japan) (PC chair)
Jacques Carette (McMaster University, Canada)
Arthur Charguéraud (INRIA, France)
Yan Chen (Google, USA)
Jan Midtgaard (Technical University of Denmark, Denmark)
John Reppy (University of Chicago, USA)
Mark Shinwell (Jane Street Europe, UK)
Nikhil Swamy (Microsoft Research, USA)
Katsuhiro Ueno (Tohoku University, Japan)