Tomáš Petříček

Assistant professor

Department of Distributed and Dependable Systems
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
Charles University

Malostranské náměstí 25
118 00 Praha 1
Czech Republic

E-mail: petricek@d3s.mff.cuni.cz
Web: http://tomasp.net
Office: 309, 3rd floor

Research

I’m interested in understanding the nature of programming and finding new and better ways of doing it. I use various methods ranging from theoretical programming langauge research, applied work resulting in open-source software, as well as interdisciplinary approaches that look at programming through the perspectives of history and philosophy. I believe that the most interesting developments in programming happen when a new way of thinking makes difficult problems disappear.

My current work is focused on programming systems. Programs are created not by just writing code, but by interacting with rich stateful programming systems or environments. Programming systems still include code, but they also encompass live or structure editors, runtime environment and other developer tools. I believe that we need to (i) find new fundamental ways of studying programming systems, (ii) revisit past programming systems that offered interesting ways of interaction, and (iii) apply those ideas to domains such as data science tooling or low-code and no-code programming.

In recent years, I also worked on functional programming and contributed to the development of the F# language and type providers at Microsoft Research. My PhD from University of Cambridge was on coeffects, a theory of context-aware programming languages. At University of Kent and The Alan Turing Institute, I spent most of my time working on programming tools for data science.

Recent work

• Technical dimensions of programming systems - a framework for studying stateful, interactive, graphical systems
• The Lost Ways of Programming: Commodore 64 BASIC - BASIC as an interactive programming system
• Histogram: You have to know the past to understand the present - experimental data exploration tool
• The Gamma: Tools for open data-driven storytelling (and more demos) - data exploration for non-programmers
• Compost.js: Composable data visualization library - functional charting library for the web
• Coeffects: Context-aware programming languages - interactive explanation of my PhD research

Teaching

• I have no fixed office hours, drop me an email if you want to meet!
• In winter 2023/24, I will be teaching Write your own tiny programming system(s)! (NPRG077)
  (In the future, NPRG077 will alternate with NPRG075)
• In summer 2022/23, I supervised a lab for Introduction to Linux (NSWI177)
• In winter 2022/23, I was teaching Programming language design (NPRG075)

Education & experience

• Lecturer, University of Kent, UK, 2018-2022
• Visiting Researcher, The Alan Turing Institute, UK, 2016-2020
• Postdoc/contractor, Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK, 2014-2016
• PhD, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK, 2017
• Mgr (MSc), Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University in Prague, 2010

Publications

 @inproceedings{edwards_evaluating_2019,
    title = {{Evaluating programming systems design}},
    author = {Edwards, Jonathan and Kell, Stephen and Petricek, Tomas and Church, Luke},
    year = {2019},
    booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 30th Annual Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group}},
    editor = {Marasoiu, Mariana and Church, Luke and Marshall, Lindsay},
    publisher = {Psychology of Programming Interest Group},
    location = {Newcastle University, UK},
    url = {https://ppig.org/papers/2019-ppig-30th-edwards/},
}
 

 @inproceedings{edwards_interaction_2022,
    title = {{Interaction vs. Abstraction: Managed Copy and Paste}},
    author = {Edwards, Jonathan and Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2022},
    booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Programming Abstractions and Interactive Notations, Tools, and Environments}},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    series = {{PAINT 2022}},
    location = {New York, NY, USA},
    doi = {10.1145/3563836.3568723},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-9910-4},
    pages = {11--19},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3563836.3568723},
    shorttitle = {Interaction vs. Abstraction},
}
 

 @inproceedings{edwards_live_2023,
    title = {{Live \& Local Schema Change: Challenge Problems}},
    author = {Edwards, Jonathan and Petricek, Tomas and van der Storm, Tijs},
    year = {2023},
    doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2309.11406},
    url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2309.11406},
    shorttitle = {Live \& Local Schema Change},
}
 

 @inproceedings{jakubovic_ascending_2022,
    title = {{Ascending the ladder to self-sustainability}},
    author = {Jakubovic, Joel and Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2022},
    booktitle = {{To appear in Onward! 2022: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGPLAN international symposium on new ideas, new paradigms, and reflections on programming and software, Auckland, New Zealand, December, 2022}},
    editor = {Singer, Jeremy and Scholliers, Christophe},
    publisher = {ACM},
}
 

 @article{jakubovic_technical_2023,
    title = {{Technical Dimensions of Programming Systems}},
    author = {Jakubovic, Joel and Edwards, Jonathan and Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2023},
    journal = {{The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming}},
    number = {3},
    doi = {10.22152/programming-journal.org/2023/7/13},
    issn = {2473-7321},
    pages = {13:1--13:59},
    url = {https://programming-journal.org/2023/7/13/},
    volume = {7},
}
 

 @incollection{mycroft_effect_2016,
    title = {{Effect Systems Revisited— Control-Flow Algebra and Semantics}},
    author = {Mycroft, Alan and Orchard, Dominic and Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2016},
    booktitle = {{Semantics, Logics, and Calculi: Essays Dedicated to Hanne Riis Nielson and Flemming Nielson on the Occasion of Their 60th Birthdays}},
    editor = {Probst, Christian W. and Hankin, Chris and Hansen, René Rydhof},
    publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
    series = {{Lecture Notes in Computer Science}},
    location = {Cham},
    doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-27810-0_1},
    isbn = {978-3-319-27810-0},
    pages = {1--32},
}
 

 @inproceedings{orchard_embedding_2014,
    title = {{Embedding effect systems in Haskell}},
    author = {Orchard, Dominic and Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2014},
    booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 2014 ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Haskell}},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    series = {{Haskell '14}},
    location = {New York, NY, USA},
    doi = {10.1145/2633357.2633368},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-3041-1},
    pages = {13--24},
}
 

 @article{perera_linked_2022,
    title = {{Linked visualisations via Galois dependencies}},
    author = {Perera, Roly and Nguyen, Minh and Petricek, Tomas and Wang, Meng},
    year = {2022},
    journal = {{Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages}},
    number = {POPL},
    doi = {10.1145/3498668},
    pages = {7:1--7:29},
    volume = {6},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_against_2015,
    title = {{Against a universal definition of 'Type'}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2015},
    booktitle = {{2015 ACM International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software (Onward!)}},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    series = {{Onward! 2015}},
    location = {New York, NY, USA},
    doi = {10.1145/2814228.2814249},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-3688-8},
    pages = {254--266},
}
 

 @article{petricek_ai_2023,
    title = {{AI Assistants: A Framework for Semi-Automated Data Wrangling}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas and Burg, Gerrit J. J. van den and Nazábal, Alfredo and Ceritli, Taha and Jiménez-Ruiz, Ernesto and Williams, Christopher K. I.},
    year = {2023},
    journal = {{IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering}},
    number = {9},
    doi = {10.1109/TKDE.2022.3222538},
    issn = {1558-2191},
    pages = {9295--9306},
    url = {https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9953543},
    volume = {35},
    shorttitle = {AI Assistants},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_coeffects_2013,
    title = {{Coeffects: Unified Static Analysis of Context-Dependence}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas and Orchard, Dominic and Mycroft, Alan},
    year = {2013},
    booktitle = {{Automata, Languages, and Programming}},
    editor = {Fomin, Fedor V. and Freivalds, Rūsiņ š and Kwiatkowska, Marta and Peleg, David},
    publisher = {Springer},
    series = {{Lecture Notes in Computer Science}},
    location = {Berlin, Heidelberg},
    doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-39212-2_35},
    isbn = {978-3-642-39212-2},
    pages = {385--397},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_coeffects_2014,
    title = {{Coeffects: a calculus of context-dependent computation}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas and Orchard, Dominic and Mycroft, Alan},
    year = {2014},
    booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming}},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    series = {{ICFP '14}},
    location = {New York, NY, USA},
    doi = {10.1145/2628136.2628160},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-2873-9},
    pages = {123--135},
    shorttitle = {Coeffects},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_collecting_2010,
    title = {{Collecting hollywood's garbage: avoiding space-leaks in composite events}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas and Syme, Don},
    year = {2010},
    booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 9th International Symposium on Memory Management}},
    editor = {Vitek, Jan and Lea, Doug},
    publisher = {ACM},
    location = {Toronto, Canada},
    doi = {10.1145/1806651.1806662},
    pages = {53--62},
}
 

 @article{petricek_composable_2021,
    title = {{Composable data visualizations}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2021},
    journal = {{Journal of Functional Programming}},
    doi = {10.1017/S0956796821000046},
    issn = {0956-7968, 1469-7653},
    pages = {e13},
    volume = {31},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_data_2017,
    title = {{Data Exploration through Dot-driven Development}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2017},
    booktitle = {{31st European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2017)}},
    editor = {Müller, Peter},
    publisher = {Schloss Dagstuhl--Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik},
    series = {{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)}},
    location = {Dagstuhl, Germany},
    doi = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2017.21},
    isbn = {978-3-95977-035-4},
    pages = {21:1--21:27},
    volume = {74},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_extending_2011,
    title = {{Extending monads with pattern matching}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas and Mycroft, Alan and Syme, Don},
    year = {2011},
    booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Haskell}},
    editor = {Claessen, Koen},
    publisher = {ACM},
    location = {Tokyo, Japan},
    doi = {10.1145/2034675.2034677},
    pages = {1--12},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/2034675.2034677},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_f_2014,
    title = {{The F\# Computation Expression Zoo}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas and Syme, Don},
    year = {2014},
    booktitle = {{Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages}},
    editor = {Flatt, Matthew and Guo, Hai-Feng},
    publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
    series = {{Lecture Notes in Computer Science}},
    location = {Cham},
    doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-04132-2_3},
    isbn = {978-3-319-04132-2},
    pages = {33--48},
}
 

 @article{petricek_foundations_2020,
    title = {{Foundations of a live data exploration environment}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2020},
    journal = {{The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming}},
    number = {3},
    doi = {10.22152/programming-journal.org/2020/4/8},
    issn = {2473-7321},
    pages = {8:1--8:37},
    volume = {4},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_gamma_2022,
    title = {{The Gamma: Programmatic Data Exploration for Non-programmers}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2022},
    booktitle = {{2022 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC)}},
    doi = {10.1109/VL/HCC53370.2022.9833134},
    pages = {1--7},
    shorttitle = {The Gamma},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_in_2014,
    title = {{In the Age of Web: Typed Functional-First Programming Revisited}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas and Syme, Don and Bray, Zach},
    year = {2014},
    booktitle = {{Proceedings ML Family/OCaml Users and Developers workshops}},
    editor = {Kiselyov, Oleg and Garrigue, Jacques},
    series = {{EPTCS}},
    location = {Gothenburg, Sweden},
    doi = {10.4204/EPTCS.198.3},
    pages = {64--79},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.198.3},
    volume = {198},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_joinads_2011,
    title = {{Joinads: A Retargetable Control-Flow Construct for Reactive, Parallel and Concurrent Programming}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas and Syme, Don},
    year = {2011},
    booktitle = {{Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages}},
    editor = {Rocha, Ricardo and Launchbury, John},
    publisher = {Springer},
    series = {{Lecture Notes in Computer Science}},
    location = {Berlin, Heidelberg},
    doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-18378-2_17},
    isbn = {978-3-642-18378-2},
    pages = {205--219},
    shorttitle = {Joinads},
}
 

 @article{petricek_language_2024,
    title = {{Language and the Rise of the Algorithm by Jeffrey M. Binder (review)}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2024},
    journal = {{Technology and Culture}},
    number = {1},
    issn = {1097-3729},
    pages = {427--429},
    url = {https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/920566},
    volume = {65},
}
 

 @article{petricek_miscomputation_2017,
    title = {{Miscomputation in software: Learning to live with errors}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2017},
    journal = {{The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming}},
    number = {2},
    doi = {10.22152/programming-journal.org/2017/1/14},
    issn = {2473-7321},
    pages = {14:1--14:24},
    volume = {1},
    shorttitle = {Miscomputation in software},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_programming_2016,
    title = {{Programming language theory: Thinking the unthinkable}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2016},
    booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 27th Annual Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group}},
    editor = {Church, Luke},
    publisher = {Psychology of Programming Interest Group},
    location = {Cambridge, UK},
    pages = {31},
    url = {https://ppig.org/papers/2016-ppig-27th-petricek/},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_programming_2021,
    title = {{Programming as architecture, design, and urban planning}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2021},
    booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 2021 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software}},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    series = {{Onward! 2021}},
    location = {New York, NY, USA},
    doi = {10.1145/3486607.3486770},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-9110-8},
    pages = {114--124},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_types_2016,
    title = {{Types from data: making structured data first-class citizens in F\#}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas and Guerra, Gustavo and Syme, Don},
    year = {2016},
    booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 37th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation}},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    series = {{PLDI '16}},
    location = {New York, NY, USA},
    doi = {10.1145/2908080.2908115},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-4261-2},
    pages = {477--490},
}
 

 @article{petricek_what_2018,
    title = {{What we talk about when we talk about monads}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2018},
    journal = {{The Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming}},
    number = {3},
    doi = {10.22152/programming-journal.org/2018/2/12},
    issn = {2473-7321},
    pages = {12:1--12:27},
    volume = {2},
}
 

 @inproceedings{petricek_wrattler_2018,
    title = {{Wrattler: Reproducible, live and polyglot notebooks}},
    author = {Petricek, Tomas and Geddes, James and Sutton, Charles},
    year = {2018},
    publisher = {USENIX},
    location = {London, UK},
    url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/tapp2018/presentation/petricek},
    shorttitle = {Wrattler},
}
 

 @inproceedings{syme_f_2011,
    title = {{The F\# Asynchronous Programming Model}},
    author = {Syme, Don and Petricek, Tomas and Lomov, Dmitry},
    year = {2011},
    booktitle = {{Practical Aspects of Declarative Languages}},
    editor = {Rocha, Ricardo and Launchbury, John},
    publisher = {Springer},
    series = {{Lecture Notes in Computer Science}},
    location = {Berlin, Heidelberg},
    doi = {10.1007/978-3-642-18378-2_15},
    isbn = {978-3-642-18378-2},
    pages = {175--189},
}
 

 @inproceedings{syme_themes_2013,
    title = {{Themes in information-rich functional programming for internet-scale data sources}},
    author = {Syme, Donald and Battocchi, Keith and Takeda, Kenji and Malayeri, Donna and Petricek, Tomas},
    year = {2013},
    booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 2013 workshop on Data driven functional programming}},
    publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
    series = {{DDFP '13}},
    location = {New York, NY, USA},
    doi = {10.1145/2429376.2429378},
    isbn = {978-1-4503-1871-6},
    pages = {1--4},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/2429376.2429378},
}
 

 @article{taylorgooby_covid19_2023,
    title = {{Covid19, Charitable Giving and Collectivism: a data-harvesting approach}},
    author = {Taylor-Gooby, Peter and Petricek, Tomas and Cunliffe, Jack},
    year = {2023},
    journal = {{Journal of Social Policy}},
    number = {3},
    doi = {10.1017/S0047279421000714},
    issn = {0047-2794, 1469-7823},
    pages = {473--494},
    url = {https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-social-policy/article/covid19-charitable-giving-and-collectivism-a-dataharvesting-approach/4BDA370E2FF33E0A9E3CF63757569FA3},
    volume = {52},
    shorttitle = {Covid19, Charitable Giving and Collectivism},
}