- Rachit's Blog

Knowledge is dead.

I find “transpiler” to be a useless word: depending on the speaker, it can mean anything from a text replacement tool to a sophisticated optimizing compiler; I would much rather just use “compiler” to describe these systems.

PLDI is one of the marquee programming languages conference and one my favorite ones to attend.

I am a systems researcher which means almost all of my research requires writing lots of a code.

Content Warning: Death My dear friend and colleague Priya Srikumar passed away in a car accident.

This tool is different from a compiler which often has a complex frontend, an optimizing middle end, and code generators for various backends.

I find myself repeating the following advice to my mentees: Assume your manager (advisor) remembers nothing about your previous meeting.

This class is about the study of programming languages.

I cannot be happy outside academia If it is novel, it is useful If it is useful, it is publishable Engineering does not matter Presentations do not matter Writing does not matter I will build and they will come Pedantry and insight are the same thing Crit…

Dear Sir, I am afraid to inform you that you have built a compiler.

Personal infrastructure loosely refers to all the tools and systems I have to interact on a regular basis to do my job as a PhD researcher.

“Commoditize your complement” is an idea about how companies can build profitable markets without complete vertical integration or monopolization.11I highly recommend “Laws of Tech: Commoditize Your Complement” for a more in-depth look into this idea.

If you’re excited by the ideas in this post, please consider registering for and submitting to LATTE: the first workshop on languages, tools, and techniques for accelerator design co-located with ASPLOS.

FPGAs, a form of reconfigurable architectures, already power a large number of datacenter applications.

With the end of the Spring ’20 semester a month away, I have spent almost two academic years at Cornell.

Conferences in computer science are an odd occurrence.

Collaborations in systems research is how I’ve built some of the best tools in my research.

I often describe the basic philosophy of research using a metaphor: bash your head in a wall over and over till you find a way to break it and then repeat it ad nauseam.

Update, 2022: After being at Cornell for couple more years, I’ve developed a more nuanced opinion of the “free agent system” at Cornell CIS.

Instead of being a judgement of what PL research should be, this short post is simply a reflection of my research interests and what role PL plays into it.