ICFP/SPLASH 2025
Sun 12 - Sat 18 October 2025 Singapore
Tue 14 Oct 2025 11:15 - 11:40 at Orchid Small - Session 1 Chair(s): Michael Coblenz

The average programming language researcher holds the opinion that syntax is the least important part of a programming language. The average programmer disagrees. The syntax of a functional, dependently typed programming language differs significantly from that of a typical imperative language. As a part of our goal to develop a dependent type theory and programming language tailored to imperative programmers, we wish to explore the impact of syntax on comprehensibility and usability of a dependently typed language, specifically for experienced imperative programmers. To this end, we develop a prototypical imperative syntax that can be transformed into an existing dependently typed language, Idris. We develop several transformation algorithms to take imperative constructs such as loops and statements from this syntax to terms that typecheck in Idris, allowing programs to be executed within Idris’s ecosystem. We also develop an algorithm to automatically derive decidable equality instances for custom types, enabling dependent elimination with no additional effort from the programmer. As future work, we aim to conduct a formal user study to evaluate the effectiveness of this syntax for our purposes.

Tue 14 Oct

Displayed time zone: Perth change

10:50 - 12:05
Session 1HATRA at Orchid Small
Chair(s): Michael Coblenz University of California, San Diego
10:50
25m
Talk
Usability Barriers for Liquid Types (Summary of Published Work)
HATRA
Catarina Gamboa Carnegie Mellon University and University of Lisbon, Abigail Elena Reese Carnegie Mellon University, Alcides Fonseca LASIGE; University of Lisbon, Jonathan Aldrich Carnegie Mellon University
Link to publication
11:15
25m
Talk
Imperative Syntax for Dependent Types
HATRA
Bhakti Shah University of St. Andrews, Edwin Brady University of St. Andrews
Link to publication
11:40
25m
Talk
Decomposable Type Highlighting for Bidirectional Type and Cast Systems
HATRA
Max Carroll University of Cambridge, Patrick Ferris University of Cambridge, UK, Anil Madhavapeddy University of Cambridge, UK
Link to publication