PLDI 2026 gave authors a five-day response window, February 17-21, 2026, between
review delivery and the March 5 notification (dates from pldi26.sigplan.org,
read 2026-07-08; every cycle re-times this). The response is read by people who
build compilers and verifiers for a living: precision beats rhetoric, and a
pointer into your own submitted PDF beats a paragraph of reassurance.
Sort every reviewer point into one of four buckets and answer them in this order:
| Bucket | Example at PLDI | Correct move |
|---|---|---|
| Factual error | "The analysis ignores exceptions" when §4.2 handles them | Quote §4.2 verbatim, one sentence of context |
| Soundness doubt | "Theorem 2 seems to assume no reentrancy" | State the assumption's exact location; if the reviewer is right, say what the fix costs |
| Evaluation gap | "No comparison against the LLVM baseline at -O2" | Give the number if it exists in your logs; otherwise commit to the exact experiment, not to "more evaluation" |
| Scope disagreement | "Why not handle JIT compilation?" | Defend the stated scope; do not promise to widen it |
A soundness doubt outranks everything. One reviewer convinced your core theorem or transformation is broken outweighs three asking for extra benchmarks, so spend your first and best paragraph there.
We thank all reviewers. We first address the soundness question (Rev B),
then the baseline request (Rev A, Rev C), then smaller points.
[B1: soundness of Thm 2 under reentrancy]
Assumption A3 (§5.1, p.12) excludes reentrant callbacks; the proof uses it
in Lemma 4. We will state A3 in the theorem statement itself. The
restriction removes 2 of 14 benchmark programs (§6.1 already notes this).
[A2/C3: -O2 baseline]
Our logs include this configuration: geomean 1.11x vs 1.17x reported.
We will add the column to Table 4.
[C5: JIT scope]
Out of scope by design (§2); AOT-only assumptions are used in §4.3.
Archive the response beside the submitted PDF. If the decision is acceptance,
your camera-ready and artifact must actually deliver every "we will" sentence —
PLDI reviewers routinely check; see pldi-camera-ready and
pldi-artifact-evaluation. If it is rejection, the response doubles as the
revision plan for the next November.
[Decisive issue] <the one objection that moves the decision>
[Bucket map] Rev A: ... / Rev B: ... / Rev C: ...
[New-number policy] <what may be cited, from which logged runs>
[Commitments] <numbered, feasible, camera-ready-sized>
[Anonymity check] pass / fail