And let the fun begin.

I am still in Philadelphia. After three meetings with my mentor, Stephanie, I am extremely excited about the next few weeks. The first two meetings were spent brain-storming about possible summer projects. I finally decided that analyzing properties of dependently typed languages seemed like an interesting subject. I have no background whatsoever in functional programming languages, so this decision is mainly influenced by the experiences I have had with Coq (a functional language that is used as a proof-assistant) and the first three chapters in "Types and Programming Languages" by Benjamin Pierce. But Stephanie said that I had every right to complain about it if I thought I was not meant for dependently typed programming languages. So, here's to hoping for a successful relationship with the above-mentioned languages.

My background will come into play a lot with this project. I will get a chance to test algorithms I am aware of to study the behavior of dependently typed languages. So, in a sense, I have a lot of freedom in the way I choose to analyze these programming languages.

That was everything I have discovered about my project. I also discovered that lambda calculus cannot be learned easily. My question to Stephanie, "How the hell am I supposed to do this?" (I can be very blunt sometimes). Her response, "It just happens." Hopefully, it will happen next week.

I also went to the weekly PL Club Meeting. That is where graduate students and professors meet to discuss a paper as chosen by the presenter (a member of the PL Club). We discussed Gordon Plotkin's "Call-by-Name, Call-by-Value, and the Lambda Calculus" which is thought to be a ground-breaking paper in this "world". It was the first time I had heard of it (seeing the heavy background I have in type systems ;) ), however I felt reasonably at home with all the PL jargon being thrown around. Having more than a week's worth of knowledge would have been nice, but we are discussing the second part of the same paper next week, so it should be fun (in the most normal CS sense of the word "fun").

I also discovered the trucks outside the buildings on campus. They have the most amazing yet cheap food you could imagine. I wish they had those back in Fort Worth!

Another ground-breaking discovery was the whole living-in-the-city experience. I have two Starbucks (very very important), a Gap, Ann Taylor Loft (very important), CVS, Boston Market, Grocery Store, and numerous other eateries within walking distance. My life is complete! :) I also rode the Subway for the first time on this Continent (I have ridden the subway in Singapore before). And I explored downtown. This city has so much history! I saw Independence Hall, the Second Bank of the United States, a random 18th century-style garden, and many other sights. I need to go back downtown very soon. There are so many amazing places I haven't seen yet!

So, yes, I love Philadelphia. It is a drastic change from Fort Worth with the big CS department and the city environment, but it a very good change for me. I plan to go to NY next weekend, and make some headway into my research. More experiences coming soon!

June 2 - June 8