[jondgoodwin]

> Several of the axes mentioned (memory management, language specialization) lack any documented attempts to systematize their treatment at the language level.

This is not entirely true. The author of the Gradual Memory Management paper you cite is currently building [1] a systems programming language called Cone [2] that incorporates these mechanisms. Although much work remains to be done, the online reference documentation does go into some detail about the syntax and semantics for references, allocators and permissions.

[1] http://github.com/jondgoodwin/cone [2] http://cone.jondgoodwin.com

[wcrichton]

Sorry Jon, I didn't mean to imply you haven't been making progress on your language. I was thinking moreso in terms of published research.

[jondgoodwin]

I appreciate the clarification, as I did not catch that from the context. I just assumed maybe you were not aware of my follow-up work with Cone.

I do think there are good research opportunities in these ideas, e.g.:

* Type theoretic work on formally proving the soundness of the mechanics (as a follow-on to the proof work done with Pony and Rust-belt).

* Cross-allocator comparative studies of performance and other factors (although many such studies have been conducted in the past, the fact that you can control for the language/runtime and even test hybrid memory management strategies would make a new study a worthy addition to prior work).

* Assessing the impact of borrowed references and lexical memory management on tracing GC's "generational hypothesis"

In your role at Stamford, perhaps you can inspire students to pursue such projects. My focus is devoted to real-world results, but I would be happy to offer support, if that would be of any help.