June 12

Porting PyGame to Racket

PyGame is a popular library for game development in Python. The purpose of this thesis is to port PyGame to Racket and, more specifically, to the BSL and ISL teaching languages in Racket. However, the task is not just to port the library (with adequate performance); rather, it should be ported in such a way that it fits to the functional programming style emphasized by our Informatik 1 lectures (e.g. by adapting it to the “universe teachpack” style of interactive programming). If this thesis is successful, we plan to consider its use for the Tübingen Informatik 1 lecture.

Further Information

March 28

Internalizing the sequent calculus dualities

Gentzen’s sequent calculus is a foundation of modern logic and, more recently, programming language design. It is known for being more symmetric than natural deduction, a deduction calculus that is biased on proofs and truth, whereas sequent calculus does symmetrically support proofs/truth and refutations/falsity.

August 6

Implementing the Knuth/Plass line breaking algorithm in Haskell

Your job is to re-implement the Knuth-Plass line breaking algorithm, which is used in the TeX and LaTeX text processing systems, in Haskell. To this end, we use an existing library for DVI files, which already contains a simple line breaking algorithm. An optional goal of this thesis is to write the thesis report using the code developed in this thesis.

Further Information

November 25

Refactoring Macros

Macros are code transformers, but the result of these transformations is usually not intended to be seen, let alone edited, by the programmer. In this Msc thesis we want to explore the usage of macros as user-extensible refactoring tools, such as “extract function” or “convert to CPS”. Practically, we envision an IDE integration where programmers can select a block of code and then select a macro that will transform the selected block of code, which then gets replaced by the result of the macro invocation. We plan to implement refactoring macros on top of the Racket language and the DrRacket IDE.

March 20

Static Typing for Snap!

Snap! is an educational visual programming language in the tradition of Scratch, but extended with features for abstraction, such as higher-order functions and user-defined data types. The purpose of this thesis is to add a static type system with type inference to Snap, in the style of Hindley-Milner type systems – the backbone of static typing in functional programming. The main challenge of this thesis, beyond implementing the type system, is to design visual metaphors for static typing that fit to the pedagogy of Snap and adapt the type Hindley-Milner system to the particular features offered by Snap!.

November 16

Web-basierte Visualisierung mittelalterlicher Musiknotation

MEI (Music Encoding Initiative) hat sich inzwischen als Format zur Musik-Codierung in der musikwissenschaftlichen Forschung etabliert. Es deckt neben der gebräuchlichen Musiknotation (Common Western Music Notation) auch Notationsformen älterer Musik (z.B. die sogenannten Neumen des Gregorianischen Chorals) ab. Das MEI Neumes Module wurde in Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem WSI und dem Musikwissenschaftlichen Institut Tübingen im Projekt Tübingen entwickelt. Eine Diplomarbeit am WSI (Gregor Schräder) entwickelte als web-basiertes Visualiertungstool den MEI Neumes Viewer. In der Arbeit soll die bisherige im MEI Neumes-Viewer verwendete “Eierkohlen”-Notation um weitere mittelalterliche Notationen (Neumennotation, Quadratnotation) erweitert werden. Als Vorbild könnte der Open-Source TeX-Dialekt Gregorio dienen.

November 16

Grafischer Eingabe-Editor für MEI-Neumes

MEI (Music Encoding Initiative) hat sich inzwischen als Format zur Musik-Codierung in der musikwissenschaftlichen Forschung etabliert. Es deckt neben der gebräuchlichen Musiknotation (Common Western Music Notation) auch Notationsformen älterer Musik (z.B. die sogenannten Neumen des Gregorianischen Chorals) ab. Das MEI Neumes Module wurde in Zusammenarbeit zwischen dem WSI und dem Musikwissenschaftlichen Institut Tübingen im Projekt TüBingen entwickelt.

November 18

Probabilistic Programming for Algorithmic Trading

Probabilistic programming is often advertized as “democratizing machine learning”, because it provides a very simple but expressive model of statistical inference. The purpose of this thesis is to validate that claim by applying it to algorithmic trading of securities. More specifically, we want to apply it for “auto-tuning” of parameters for trading strategies. In the thesis, no actual trading will take place, but we will evaluate the approach with historical ticker data.

June 28

Contract inference for relationally parametric polymorphic contracts

Guha et al have developed a way to specify relationally parametric polymorphism in contracts and check conformance at runtime. These ideas were realized in the Racket programming language. Currently, the utility of parametric contracts is limited due to the fact that parametric contracts must be instantiated explicitly in many circumstances; implicit instantiation only works for primitive types.

June 22

Embedded Probabilistic Programming with Continuous Variable Distributions

Probabilistic programming languages are programming languages which have special support to describe probabilistic models, and then perform inference in these models. They are attractive because they unify the expressive power of a general-purpose programming language with probabilistic modeling and reasoning.

March 20

DSLs for Machine Learning

We are collaborating with Christopher Ré from Stanford University to improve the interface to the DeepDive machine learning system. More specifically, we aim to phrase the interface to DeepDive as an embedded domain-specific language with the eventual goal to integrate machine learning so closely and seamlessly into ordinary programs that it is as simple to define a function or data structure via machine learning than to define a function via ordinary programming. The goal of this thesis is to to make the first steps towards that goal. Concretely, the first step would consist in embedding DeepDive into a statically typed programming language such as Scala.

October 5

Implementing a Monadic Testsuite Driver

Ordinary wisdom says that the individual tests in a testsuite should be independent of each other. That is, each test should be able to run independently of any other test, and in any order. This independence allows the testsuite driver to execute tests in parallel and easily summarize the results using a tests passed / tests failed metric.

February 19

Highcharts for Scala

Highcharts is a Javascript library for visualizing data. The purpose of this thesis is to develop an adapter of Highcharts for Scala, such that data in the Scala runtime can be visualized with the same ease as with dedicated data science languages such as Mathlab or R.

August 23

Software-supported piano practice

Pianists perform a variety of exercises to improve the evenness and precision of their playing, including scales, arpeggios, and octaves. The purpose of this thesis is to develop an application that supports pianists in two ways: 1) Training the ear to identify uneven scales, arpeggios etc., and 2) Analyze the exercises of the pianist to identify flaws in the execution of the exercises.

May 1

Transformation von Präprozessorvarianz auf Laufzeitvarianz

Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist, eine Softwareproduktlinie der Firma Bosch, die mit C und CPP realisiert wurde, so zu transformieren, dass die Compile-Zeit Variabilität von CPP ersetzt wird durch Laufzeitvariabilität.

April 12

Recording student progress in DrRacket

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a plug-in for the DrRacket development environment that will monitor and log the activity of students. The (appropriately anonymized) collected data will then be used for the scientific evaluation of how beginning programmers work. The main focus of this work is on collecting and representing the developer activity in such a way that interesting analyses can be defined on top of it.

March 23

Entwicklung eines Systems zur Suche von DIY-Projektbeschreibungen mit Bildern und Fotos

Das im Rahmen des “Tübinger Softwareprojekts” entwickelte System für Schritt für Schritt Anleitungen soll in dieser Bachelor-Arbeit um eine neuartige Such-Funktionalität erweitert werden. Wir gehen in Zukunft davon aus, dass Nutzer Projektbeschreibungen nicht mehr durch Texteingabe suchen, sondern eher nach Fotos oder Bildern im Internet. Ein Ansatz zur Implementierung der Funktionalität besteht darin, zuerst das Bild zu Verschlagworten und die so erhaltenen Schlagwörter dann als Eingabe einer „klassischen“ Suchmaschine zu verwenden. Hierzu gibt es bereits verschiedene Technologien. Die Aufgabe der Bachelor-Arbeit ist es nun, die vorhandenen Technologien zu identifizieren, zu analysieren und geeignete Technologien auszuwählen. Auf Basis von zu entwickelnden System- und Interaktionskonzepten soll die Implementierung bzw. Systemintegration erfolgen. Ziel ist die prototypische Darstellung einer Suche nach einer DIY-Projektbeschreibung mithilfe eines gemachten Fotos.

March 23

Assistenz-Funktionalität für Schritt für Schritt Anleitungen

Das im Rahmen des “Tübinger Softwareprojekts” entwickelte System für Schritt für Schritt Anleitunge soll in dieser Bachelor-Arbeit um eine Assistenz-Funktionalität erweitert werden. Im Allgemeinen sind Assistenten wie beispielsweise Apple Siri oder Microsoft Cortana hinreichend bekannt. Die Herausforderungen bei diesen Assistenten liegen in der Modellierung der Domäne und in der Bereitstellung des Domänenwissens. Zusätzlich muss der Assistent per API in das System eingebunden werden.

June 19

Automatic locality-friendly array interface extension of numerical functions through C++ template metaprogramming

Numerical functions often need be invoked on views of vectors or matrixes, derived by selecting some elements or by pre-transforming them. For instance, one might want to prescale matrix elements before applying an existing FFT algorithm on them. Often this must be done by copying the elements to a separate array, and then invoking the original FFT algorithm, but this procedure is not efficient because it uses additional space and therefore has higher impact on data caches.

October 1

Paper accepted for publication at OOPSLA 2020

Our paper “Effects as Capabilities: Effect Handlers and Lightweight Effect Polymorphism” (Jonathan Brachthäuser
AlumniJonathan Immanuel Brachthäuser, Philipp Schuster
AlumniPhilipp Schuster and Klaus Ostermann
HeadKlaus Ostermann ) has been accepted for publication at the International Conference on Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages & Applications (OOPSLA, 2020).

July 25

Presentation at ICFP 2020

Philipp Schuster
AlumniPhilipp Schuster presents the paper Compiling Effect Handlers in Capability-Passing Style at the International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP) 2020 virtual event.

May 9

Two papers conditionally accepted at ICFP'20

Two papers of the effects research team have been conditionally accepted at the International Conference of Functional Programming 2020.

January 23

Paper accepted for publication in the Journal of Functional Programming

Our paper “Effekt: Capability-Passing Style for Type- and Effect-Safe, Extensible Effect Handlers in Scala” (Jonathan Brachthäuser
AlumniJonathan Immanuel Brachthäuser, Philipp Schuster
AlumniPhilipp Schuster and Klaus Ostermann
HeadKlaus Ostermann ) has been accepted for been accepted for publication in the Journal of Functional Programming (JFP).

December 18

Presentation at the Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages 2020

Ingo Skupin
AlumniIngo Skupin presents the paper Decomposition Diversity with Symmetric Data and Codata at the Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages in New Orleans (USA).

November 8

Paper Award at GPCE 2018

At GPCE 2018, we have been awarded a “Most Influential Paper Award” for our 2008 GPCE paper on “Polymorphic Embedding of DSLs” by Hofer, Ostermann, Rendel, and Moors.

November 7

Presentation at OOPSLA 2018

Jonathan Brachthäuser
AlumniJonathan Immanuel Brachthäuser presents the paper Effect Handlers for the Masses at the International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages and Applications (OOPSLA) in Boston, MA, USA.

May 31 2.15pm

Guest Lecture by Philipp Gerhard (iPoint-systems gmbh)

Philipp Gerhard, Software Developer at iPoint-systems gmbh will give an invited guest lecture in Software Engineering and talk about Test Driven Development and Continuous Integration.

May 24

Open PhD Student Position, Career Changers Welcome

We have an open position for a PhD student in our group, to be filled immediately.

May 10 2.15pm

Guest Lecture by Heiko Hütter (DAASI International)

Heiko Hütter, Project Manager and Scrum expert at DAASI International will talk about Challenges and best practices in multi-project and multi-product setups using Scrum.

May 3 2.15pm

Guest Lecture by Amra Avdic (Novatec GmbH)

Amra Avdic, Senior Consultant at Novatec GmbH, will talk about Requirements Engineering and agile Methods.

April 21 1.30pm

Industry project fair

Students present their finished projects and our industry partners present project proposals for the next iteration of “Das Tübinger Softwareprojekt”, an industry-acedemia collaboration with the goal of letting students experience a real software project as a programmer during their undergraduate studys, or as a team leader during their graduate studies.

January 13

Dubai 100

Our TSP Team “Rehality” was granted to join “Dubai 100”. Starting on 13th of January 2017 they will participate in a intensive 100-day programme designed to accelerate the growth of early-stage startups. Only 10 Teams where given this great opportunity.

August 2

Paper accepted at OOPSLA

Our paper “Parsing with First-Class Derivatives” (Jonathan Brachthäuser
AlumniJonathan Immanuel Brachthäuser, Tillmann Rendel
AlumniTillmann Rendel and Klaus Ostermann
HeadKlaus Ostermann ) has been accepted for presentation at the annual conference of Object-oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA).

April 15 1.30pm

Industry project fair

Students present their finished projects and our industry partners present project proposals for the next iteration of “Das Tübinger Softwareprojekt”, an industry-acedemia collaboration with the goal of letting students experience a real software project as a programmer during their undergraduate studys, or as a team leader during their graduate studies.

December 22

School project supported by Vector Stiftung

We are happy to announce that the Vector Stiftung is supporting our project “Denken verstehen lernen”, where we aim to develop and try out a “Computational Thinking” curriculum for elementary schools.

November 13

Preprint for POPL paper online

The preprint for our paper on equirecursive types in System Fω, with title “System Fω with Equirecursive Types for Datatype-generic Programming”, is now available online.

October 5

Paper accepted at POPL

Our paper on equirecursive types in System Fω, with title “System Fω with Equirecursive Types for Datatype-generic Programming”, has been accepted for presentation at the annual Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages.

May 1

Paper accepted at ICFP

Our paper on automatic refunctionalization for a language with copattern matching has been accepted for presentation at the International Conference on Functional Programming.

April 17 1.30pm

Software Engineering Project Fair @ PS

Meet us for the software engineering project fair, in which our industry partners present their proposal for this year’s software project offers.

March 26

Jugend forscht Reviewing

This year, Klaus Ostermann
HeadKlaus Ostermann is a reviewer at the state-wide Jugend forscht competition in Baden-Württemberg. We are looking forward to some exciting innovations by junior researchers!

March 6

Vote for us in the SIGPLAN council elections!

Klaus Ostermann
HeadKlaus Ostermann is a candidate to be a SIGPLAN member-at-large in the ACM council elections.

March 6

Community Involvement

Klaus Ostermann
HeadKlaus Ostermann was invited to participate in the following international venues:

February 1

Dagstuhl Seminar on Domain-Specific Languages

Klaus Ostermann
HeadKlaus Ostermann and Tillmann Rendel
AlumniTillmann Rendel attend the Dagstuhl-Seminar on Domain-Specific Languages from February 1 to 6, 2015. Several participants are interested in language design patterns, and Tillmann Rendel
AlumniTillmann Rendel co-organizes a breakout group on the topic with Ulrik Pagh Schultz and Eric Walkingshaw.

October 1

Move to Tübingen

Prof. Klaus Ostermann
HeadKlaus Ostermann and part of his group move to Tübingen University, where Prof. Ostermann now holds the chair of programming languages and software technology.