School of Computer Science

Simon Fowler Seminar: First-Class Distributed Session Types

Session types codify communication patterns, giving developers guarantees that applications satisfy predefined protocols. Session types have come a long way from their theoretical roots: recent work has seen the implementation of static analysis tools; embeddings into a multitude of programming languages; and the integration of session types into languages as a first-class language construct.

Work at Edinburgh has concentrated on the latter. Lindley and Morris have extended the experimental functional programmming language Links with session-typed hannels in a multithreaded setting.

Distribution, however, brings challenges such as failure and the need for distributed channel delegation algorithms. In this talk, I will demonstrate and discuss the design and implementation of session types in Links. I will describe my recent work on adding support for distribution to Links, allowing the creation of session-typed, multi-user web applications.

Finally, I will describe recent, in-progress, work on a static type system and semantics allowing the controlled relaxation of the requirement of *linearity* (that
every endpoint must be used exactly once) to that of affinity (that every endpoint must be used at most once) in order to account for the question of users leaving a session midway through, and describe how the system still retains core metatheoretic pro

Event details

  • When: 5th June 2017 13:00 - 14:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Seminar

Best Final Year Student at Lovelace 2017

We are delighted to congratulate Iveta Dulova, who attended the 10th BCSWomen  Lovelace Colloquium, and walked away with the prize for “Best Final Year Student”. Iveta’s poster, titled “SensorCube: An end-to-end framework for conducting research via mobile sensing“, was based on her final year project supervised by Dr Juan Ye.

The event was held at Aberystwyth University on April 12, 2017. Also attending from St Andrews were Chloe Collins, competing in the second year category with the poster “Pedal to the metal – the role of technology in transportation” and Laura Brewis with her poster “What percentage of solitaire games are actually winnable?”.

It showed great commitment for these three students to undertake the lengthy trip at a busy time of semester. Like St Andrews, Aberystwyth, is a beautiful small seaside town with an excellent Computer Science department.  Iveta took a couple of photos showing off the beach and the campus.

Alex Bain completes 2017 London Marathon

Congratulations to School Manager Alex Bain, who completed the London Marathon again this year, raising funds for Guide Dogs. Alex, runner no 40807 is pictured below with his finisher’s medal. Donations to recognise his achievement and the training involved, can be made via his Justgiving page. Read more about his fundraising on KingdomFM.

Junior Honours: Software Team Project 2017

Earlier today our Junior Honours students presented their Team Projects. The projects involve substantial team based software engineering and rely heavily on collaborative development. There are many aspects of software and professional development along with considerable inter-team and intra-team collaborations. This year the students were asked to develop a version of the Settlers of Catan with AI players. They were further asked to make their games interoperate so one teams AI or human player might play on another teams game and board.

The teams demonstrated lots of creativity with the use of software tools, approaches to AI, use of domain specific languages, remote services, games environments, graphics development, collaborative frameworks and many tools for software engineering project development. Thanks to all the students, supervisors and coordinators for their hard work this year.

We wish all our junior honours students success with their forthcoming exams and we look forward to seeing them again for their senior honours year in September.

Images and text courtesy of Professor Aaron Quigley

Senior Honours: Poster Presentation and Demo Session 2017

Our talented hard working SH students from CS4099: Major Software Project and CS4098: Minor Software Project presented their posters and final year software artifact to staff and students earlier this week.

As Illustrated in the above collage, the busy poster session is the perfect opportunity to discuss output from their year long project with markers, and provides time to share research ideas and reflect on the experience with their peer group. We wish them success with forthcoming exams and look forward to seeing them during June graduation celebrations.

Hot off the press: Type-Driven Development with Idris

A new book, Type-Driven Development with Idris has just been published by Manning Publications. Written by Dr Edwin Brady, the creator of Idris, Type-Driven Development with Idris teaches you how to improve the performance and accuracy of your programs by taking advantage of a state-of-the-art type system.

Type-driven development is an approach to programming that embraces types as the foundation of your code. It is based on the concept of “dependent types”, which allow you to express relationships and other assumptions directly in your code, and have these assumptions checked by the compiler. With this approach, you can define specifications early in development and write code that’s easy to maintain, test, and extend.

Dr Brady said:

“Idris arose as a result of my own research into program verification and language design with advanced type systems. After spending several years immersed in the concept of programming with dependent types, I felt there was a need for a language designed for developers and practitioners as well as researchers. By teaching the concept of type-driven development using Idris, the book aims to make state-of-the-art verification techniques accessible to software practitioners.”

The book is currently available via MANNING publications: https://www.manning.com/books/type-driven-development-with-idris. ePub and Kindle versions available from April 10th. The source code, chapter 1 and chapter 13 are available as free downloads.

Alex runs London Marathon 2017 for Guide Dogs

Alex Bain will be running the London Marathon again this year, raising funds for Guide Dogs. He is holding a fundraising bake sale in the department today. There are still plenty delicious cakes and home baking on offer. Support all his effort and training by buying a cake or two.

You can also donate through his justgiving page.

*Update: Total so far £320. Cakes and other sweet treats remain.

Distinguished Lecture Series 2017: Dr David Manlove

On March 31st, Dr David Manlove from the University of Glasgow, delivered the semester two distinguished lectures in Lower and Upper College Hall. The overall title was algorithms for healthcare-related matching problems.

David started with an overview of complexity theory and solving hard problems. He gave examples of this in practice, for example how researchers constructed a best-possible tour around the best 20,000 pubs in the UK. The second lecture focussed on how to assign junior doctors to hospitals in the best way, a very practical problem but with interesting complexity issues. The final lecture focussed on the life-changing topic of how to set up exchanges of kidneys between healthy donors and patients needing transplants. David talked about how his expertise in algorithms has been translated into regularly finding the best possible matches which then result in real transplants taking place.

David is pictured above at various stages of the distinguished lecture series and outside College Hall with Head of School, Prof Steve Linton, Prof Ian Gent and Dr Ishbel Duncan,

Videos from the DLS can be accessed on Vimeo –
Lecture 1: https://vimeo.com/211633740
Lecture 2: https://vimeo.com/211634119
Lecture 3: https://vimeo.com/211634923

Images courtesy of Ryo Yanagida.