Good Programming is Mathematics and Vice Versa

Software has become critical to nearly every aspect of our civilization. Consequently, the complexity of our tools and our needs for dependability have increased immensely. Programmers need scalable tools and methodogies to keep complexity in check. Generic programming, with roots in computer algebra and symbolic mathematics, is one of the promising approaches to scalable and dependable software contruction. This talk explores recent accomplishments and lessons learned from fruitful interactions between tools support for principled programming and computational mathematics. Examples come from modern C++, OpenAxiom, symbolic mathematics, algorithmic differentiation and beyond. I will touch upon on-going projects, challenges ahead, and possible paths to solutions.

Speaker Details

Dr. Gabriel Dos Reis is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University. He received his PhD in Mathematics from Université Paris-VII and École Normale Supérieure de Cachan, France. His research interests include mathematical software, applied formal methods, programming languages and libraries, generic programming. Dr. Dos Reis received the prestigious NSF CAREER award in 2012 for his research in compilers for dependable computational mathematics. He is an active member of the ISO C++ standards committee where he regularly represents AFNOR, the French national association for standards. He authored and co-authored several features of the 2011 ISO C++ standards. He leads the Liz project, a platform for research into axiomatic programming, and OpenAxiom, an open source system for scientific computation. He served as Release Manager of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection.

Date:
Speakers:
Gabriel Dos Reis
Affiliation:
Texas A&M University