> Er, this I can understand. Every conference paper only presents you with a simplified view of the contributions. In my group I don't allow hacks. Most other

> Er, this I can understand. Every conference paper only presents you with a simplified view of the contributions. In my group I don't allow hacks. Most other good papers I can think of don't do that. It takes new students a while to get used to not maximizing performance at all costs. And if a hack must exist, then it's explained, not as a hack, but as part of the method. Don't you hate it when you implement some beautiful idea from a paper only to discover that it hardly bares any relationship to the actual method that works? > There is no way to describe every corner case within the page limits of a conference paper (specifically, I bet this was submitted to POPL 2025). You're probably right. But POPL allows for unlimited pages in an attached appendix. They can and should describe the full method. Particularly if they're going to play the game of saying that they formalized this. > Sadly that is the name of the game in conference publishing. Make a big claim in the title and hope the reviewer does not read the fine print. It's a form of namespace squatting. Do the worst job possible to claim a title that you couldn't execute on, so that when people figure out that problem, they will be forced to cite your non-working solution. I loathe this approach to publishing. We should punish people for doing. Reject for lack of honesty and your paper can't be published in related conference for X years.