Presenter: Cong Ma
Abstract: Effect handlers are a powerful feature for structuring programs with rich control flow. Lexical effect handlers, in particular, offer better modularity and stronger reasoning principles. In this talk, I’ll introduce effect handlers and share our work on Lexa, a language and compiler built to compile lexical handlers efficiently and correctly. I’ll highlight three novel techniques that broaden the design space of effect handlers’ compilation and reveal useful trade-offs between performance and expressiveness.
Bio: Cong Ma is a fourth-year PhD student at the University of Waterloo, advised by Yizhou Zhang. He designs and builds compilers that produce efficient code and are provably correct.