PLDI

It is with great pleasure that we present the proceedings of the 2009 ACM Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI'09). PLDI'09 was held from Monday, June 15 through Saturday, June 21 in Dublin, Ireland. For the first time, the main conference included three full days of technical sessions to accommodate both the growing number of accepted papers and a new addition to PLDI, the FIT (Fun Ideas and Thoughts) session. PLDI'09 also saw the return of the PLDI Outing, as well as retaining popular mainstays: the tutorials, co-located workshops (PLAS'09) and conferences (ISMM'09 and LCTES'09), the ACM Student Research Competition, and the annual SIGPLAN Award luncheon.

PLDI'09 received 196 submissions (the largest ever); and accepted 41 papers. Of the 196 submissions, two were withdrawn, leaving 194 for review. To avoid overwhelming the PC members with too many reviews (and thus, possibly compromising the quality of the reviews), the PC was the largest ever for PLDI: 22 members. At least three PC members read each submission; resulting in each PC member reviewing 26 or 27 papers. Between the end of the reviewing period and the PC meeting, the program chair identified papers that needed more opinions or discussion and initiated a number of online discussions (many of which were very lively!)

PLDI'09 used an external review committee (ERC), a first for PLDI, with 51 members to provide one external review for each submission. As is commonly the case with PC members, the ERC members also bid on papers they wanted to review. Consequently, most paper reviews came from people that actually wanted to read the paper, which we hope was reflected in the quality of the reviews.

PLDI'09 used a loose policy for double-blind submissions and reviewing, a recently adopted practice with PLDI. Specifically, authors were asked to hide their identity, but without damaging or compromising their paper. In many cases, authors provided supplementary information (e.g., technical reports) to the program chair; this information was available to the paper's reviewers on an as-needed basis. Authors could also fully reveal their identity in their rebuttal if they felt that this information would make for a stronger rebuttal. Thus, we used double-blind submissions and reviewing, but were willing to relax it as needed.

The 2-day PC meeting was held on January 24-25 at the University of Colorado campus in Boulder, Colorado. All PC members attended in person. Michael Hind and Todd Mytkowicz helped with meeting logistics. Jens Palsberg chaired the meeting, when Amer had a conflict with a paper. Throughout the entire process of receiving, reviewing, and evaluating papers, we used the softconf system. We are grateful to Richard Gerber and Paolo Gai for answering numerous questions about softconf and making many enhancements to better meet our needs. We are particularly thankful to the program committee and external review committee members for their outstanding work in reviewing so many papers.