161 papers · page 4 of 9
Parser generators give programmers a convenient and declarative way to write parsers and other language-processing applications, but their mechanisms for extension and code reuse often leave something to be desired. We introduce Ohm, a parser generator in which both grammars and …
Following the increased popularity of dynamic languages and their increased use in critical software, there have been many proposals to retrofit static type system to these languages to improve possibilities to catch bugs and improve performance. A key question for any type syste…
Little is known about how software performance evolves across software revisions. The severity of this situation is high since (i) most performance variations seem to happen accidentally and (ii) addressing a performance regression is challenging, especially when functional code …
Unlike traditional static type checking, the type system in the Dart programming language is unsound by design, even for fully annotated programs. The rationale has been that this allows compile-time detection of likely errors and enables code completion in integrated development…
Task migration allows a running program to continue its execution in a different destination environment. Increasingly, execution environments are defined by combinations of cultural and technological constraints, affecting the choice of host language, libraries and tools. A comp…
Recent empirical studies that compared static and dynamic type systems on API usability showed a positive impact of static type systems on developer productivity in most cases. Nevertheless, it is unclear how large this effect is in comparison to other factors. One obvious factor…
Programmers combine different programming languages because it allows them to use the most suitable language for a given problem, to gradually migrate existing projects from one language to another, or to reuse existing source code. However, existing cross-language mechanisms suf…
Method names with multiple separate parts are a feature of many dynamic languages derived from Smalltalk. Generalising the syntax of method names to allow parts to be repeated, optional, or alternatives, means a single definition can respond to a whole family of method requests. …
Modern JavaScript engines optimize hot functions using a JIT compiler along with type information gathered by an online profiler. However, the profiler's information can be unsound and when unexpected types are encountered the engine must recover using an expensive mechanism call…
We present an approach to cross-compile Java bytecodes to Java-Script, building on existing Java optimizing compiler technology. Static analysis determines which Java classes and methods are reachable. These are then translated to JavaScript using a re-configured Java just-in-tim…
We demonstrate how to map a control-flow analysis for a higher-order language (dynamic languages are typically higher-order) into a pointer analysis for a first-order language, such as C. This allows us to use existing pointer analysis tools to perform a control-flow analysis, ex…
Programmers often migrate from a dynamically typed to a statically typed language when their simple scripts evolve into complex programs. Optional type systems are one way of having both static and dynamic typing in the same language, while keeping its dynamically typed semantics…
Storage strategies have been proposed as a run-time optimization for the PyPy Python implementation and have shown promising results for optimizing execution speed and memory requirements. However, it remained unclear whether the approach works equally well in other dynamic langu…
Expressive static typing disciplines are a powerful way to achieve high-quality software. However, the adoption cost of such techniques should not be under-estimated. Just like gradual typing allows for a smooth transition from dynamically-typed to statically-typed programs, it s…
Reflection is a powerful programming language feature that enables language extensions, generic code, dynamic analyses, development tools, etc. However, uncontrolled reflection breaks object encapsulation and considerably increases the attack surface of programs e.g., malicious l…
We present ACDC-JS, an open-source JavaScript memory management benchmarking tool. ACDC-JS incorporates a heap model based on real web applications and may be configured to expose virtually any relevant performance characteristics of JavaScript memory management systems. ACDC-JS …
Object-orientation relies on polymorphism to express behavioral variants. As opposed to traditional procedural design, explicit type-based conditionals should be avoided. This message is conveyed in introductory material on object orientation, as well as in object-oriented reengi…
Lisp and Scheme have demonstrated the power of macros to enable programmers to evolve and craft languages. In languages with more complex syntax, macros have had less success. In part, this has been due to the difficulty in building expressive hygienic macro systems for such lang…
We report our experience in implementing SqueakJS, a bit-compatible implementation of Squeak/Smalltalk written in pure JavaScript. SqueakJS runs entirely in the Web browser with a virtual filesystem that can be directed to a server or client-side storage. Our implementation is no…
Programming language research in the last decades was mainly driven by mathematical methods (such as formal semantics, correctness proofs, type soundness proofs, etc.) or run-time arguments based on benchmark tests. This happened despite the frequent discussion over programming l…