On Solving Solved Problems

Author Sebastian Erdweg



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Sebastian Erdweg
  • Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany

Acknowledgements

The idea for this essay occurred during the preparation for the "Discussion with Experts" session on the Specification and Implementation of Type Systems that Eelco Visser and I moderated at ECOOP 2021. One of the points we had put up for discussion was: Are type systems the new "solved problem that isn’t solved"? I want to thank the reviewers for helping me to get the historical facts straight and André Pacak for feedback on draft of this paper.

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Sebastian Erdweg. On Solving Solved Problems. In Eelco Visser Commemorative Symposium (EVCS 2023). Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 109, pp. 10:1-10:6, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)
https://doi.org/10.4230/OASIcs.EVCS.2023.10

Abstract

Some problems are considered solved by the research community. But are they really and does that mean we should stop investigating them? In this essay, I argue that "solved" problems often only appear solved on the surface, while fundamental open research problems lurk below the surface. It requires dedicated researchers to discover those open problems by applying the existing solutions and putting them to the test.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Parsing
  • Theory of computation → Program analysis
Keywords
  • Research Methodology
  • Parsing
  • Type Checking

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References

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