CS294-2: Software Synthesis, Spring 2006
Suggested format for paper summaries:
Submit your summaries by email by 7pm the evening before class.
Write your summary in four brief sections. Number each section. For clarity's sake, each section can have multiple paragraphs, but please remain concise.
- Summarize the paper in your own words. Paraphrase authors' claims in order to highlight neglected contributions and to soften its hype, if any.
- Why is the paper's technique a good idea? Use the criteria below to guide your evaluation (no need to comment on all of them). Come up with your own criteria as needed.
- Programmability, adoption obstacles: Learning curve; accessibility to beginner programmers; ability for the programmer to understand the resulting code if needed.
- Scalability to large programs: of the synthesizer, of the language constructs.
- Generality: typically synthesizers work for narrow domains. Suggest a domain to which the technique could be translated.
- Why is the paper's technique a bad idea? Same as above, but focus on problems and limitations.
- Extensions: What are your ideas for carrying the work further? What would you have done differently than the authors? For old papers, what do you think would be the status of the project if the work continued to receive a lot of attention? Does the paper motivate any course project ideas?