DBLP is an online database of academic publications in computer science and related fields. Handily, it provides a Java API for accessing the data programmatically. In this blog post, I share a few fun facts I discovered while using this API to explore the data that DBLP holds about two of the main conferences on programming languages; namely, POPL and PLDI.
The code I wrote to generate the numbers is available on GitHub.
NB: A “paper” is anything listed in the conference’s proceedings on DBLP. This includes keynote presentations, short papers, posters, editorships, and regular papers.
Edit [27-Sep-2017]: I fixed a bug in my calculations for ‘most papers per conference’, which had led to some authors being missed.
Edit [17-Jun-2018]: Updated with stats from POPL 2018 and PLDI 2018.
Most papers
POPL
- 1. Benjamin C. Pierce (25 papers)
- 2. Matthias Felleisen, Robert Harper (18 papers)
- 3. Thomas W. Reps (17 papers)
- 4. John C. Mitchell, Xavier Leroy (16 papers)
PLDI
- 1. Alexander Aiken (29 papers)
- 2. Rastislav Bodík (18 papers)
- 3. Kathryn S. McKinley, Martin C. Rinard, Martin T. Vechev, Sumit Gulwani (17 papers)
- 4. Rajiv Gupta (16 papers)
Most conferences
POPL
- 1. Benjamin C. Pierce (21 conferences)
- 2. Matthias Felleisen (16 conferences)
- 3. Thomas W. Reps (15 conferences)
- 4. Alexander Aiken, John C. Mitchell, Martín Abadi, Xavier Leroy (14 conferences)
PLDI
- 1. Alexander Aiken (21 conferences)
- 2. Rajiv Gupta, Martin C. Rinard (15 conferences)
- 3. Kathryn S. McKinley (13 conferences)
- 4. Cormac Flanagan, Keshav Pingali, Eran Yahav (12 conferences)
Longest vacation
That is, the longest gap between successive papers.
POPL
- 1. J Strother Moore (1976 to 2012: 36-year gap)
- 2. Dennis E. Shasha (1984 to 2018: 34-year gap)
- 3. Alan Mycroft (1986 to 2017: 31-year gap)
- 4. Uday S. Reddy (1985 to 2012: 27-year gap)
PLDI
- 1. Barbara Liskov (1988 to 2015: 27-year gap)
- 2. Roland H.C. Yap (1992 to 2018: 26-year gap)
- 3. Joxan Jaffar (1992 to 2015: 23-year gap)
- 4. Edith Schonberg (1989 to 2010: 21-year gap)
Longest career
That is, the longest gap between the first and the most recent paper.
POPL
- 1. Patrick Cousot (1977 to 2017: 40 years)
- 2. Philip Wadler (1980 to 2018: 38 years)
- =3. John C. Reynolds (1975 to 2012 : 37 years)
- =3. Radhia Cousot (1977 to 2014: 37 years)
- =3. Thomas W. Reps (1981 to 2018: 37 years)
- 4. J Strother Moore (1976 to 2012: 36 years)
PLDI
- 1. Suresh Jagannathan (1987 to 2018: 31 years)
- =2. Alexander Aiken (1988 to 2018: 30 years)
- =2. Thomas W. Reps (1988 to 2018: 30 years)
- =3. J. Eliot B. Moss (1987 to 2016: 29 years)
- =3. Keshav Pingali (1989 to 2018: 29 years)
- 4. Barbara Liskov (1988 to 2016: 28 years)
Longest streak
That is, the longest streak of successive conferences with at least one paper.
POPL
- 1. Derek Dreyer (since 2009: 10 conferences)
- 2. John C. Mitchell (1984 to 1992: 9 conferences)
- =3. Amir Pnueli (1980 to 1987: 8 conferences)
- =3. Benjamin C. Pierce (1991 to 1998: 8 conferences)
- =4. Mitchell Wand (1982 to 1988: 7 conferences)
- =4. Pierre-Yves Strub (since 2012: 7 conferences)
- =4. Nikhil Swamy (since 2012: 7 conferences)
- =4. Vaughan R. Pratt (1977 to 1983: 7 conferences)
PLDI
- 1. Alexander Aiken (since 2010: 9 conferences)
- 2. Sumit Gulwani (2008 to 2015: 8 conferences)
- =3. Sriram Krishnamoorthy (since 2013: 6 conferences)
- =3. Sorin Lerner (2007 to 2012: 6 conferences)
- =3. Kathryn S. McKinley (2006 to 2011: 6 conferences)
- =3. Madan Musuvathi (2007 to 2012: 6 conferences)
- =3. Shmuel Sagiv (2011 to 2016: 6 conferences)
Most papers per conference
POPL
- =1. Adam Chlipala (3 papers in POPL 2015)
- =1. Derek C. Oppen (3 papers in POPL 1978)
- =1. Jeffrey D. Ullman (3 papers in POPL 1973 and in POPL 1976)
- =1. Karl Crary (3 papers in POPL 2003)
- =1. Peter Sewell (3 papers in POPL 2011)
- =1. Robert Harper (3 papers in POPL 2003)
- =1. Simon L. Peyton Jones (3 papers in POPL 2014)
- =1. Swarat Chaudhuri (3 papers in POPL 2014)
- =1. Zachary Kincaid (3 papers in POPL 2014)
PLDI
- =1. Sumit Gulwani (4 papers in PLDI 2011)
- =1. Martin T. Vechev (4 papers in PLDI 2018)
- =2. Andrew C. Myers (3 papers in PLDI 2015)
- =2. Armando Solar-Lezama (3 papers in PLDI 2016)
- =2. David I. August (3 papers in PLDI 2011)
- =2. Hongseok Yang (3 papers in PLDI 2014)
- =2. James R. Larus (3 papers in PLDI 1999)
- =2. Kathryn S. McKinley (3 papers in PLDI 2010)
- =2. Martin T. Vechev (3 papers in PLDI 2012)
- =2. Peter Lee (3 papers in PLDI 1998)
- =2. Rahul Sharma (3 papers in PLDI 2016)
- =2. Rastislav Bodík (3 papers in PLDI 2005)
