161 papers · page 7 of 9
Dynamic languages such as Python allow programs to be written more easily using high-level constructs such as comprehensions for queries and using generic code. Efficient execution of programs then requires powerful optimizations - incrementalization of expensive queries and spec…
Factor is a new dynamic object-oriented programming language. It began as an embedded scripting language and evolved to a mature application development language. The language has a simple execution model and is based on the manipulation of data on a stack. An advanced metaprogra…
First-class classes add expressive power to class-based object-oriented languages. Most importantly, programmers can abstract over common scenarios with first-class classes. When it comes to behavioral software contracts, however, first-class classes pose significant challenges. …
The design of the Icon programming language's expression evaluation system, which can perform limited backtracking, was unique amongst imperative programming languages when created. In this paper I explain and critique the original Icon design and show how a similar system can be…
Dynamic mixin is a construct available in Ruby and other dynamic languages. It can be used as a base to implement a range of programming paradigms, such as dynamic aspect-oriented programming and context-oriented programming. However, the performance characteristics of current im…
We show how package templates, a modularization mechanism originally developed for statically typed languages like Java and C#, can be applied to and implemented in a dynamic language like Groovy, by using the language's capabilities for meta-programming. We then consider a set o…
Software transactional memory (STM) is a promising approach for coordinating concurrent threads, for which many implementation strategies are currently being researched. Although some first steps exist to ease experimenting with different strategies, this still remains a relative…
Ruby is a popular, dynamic scripting language that aims to "feel natural to programmers" and give users the "freedom to choose" among many different ways of doing the same thing. While this arguably makes programming in Ruby easier, it makes it hard to build analysis and transfor…
JavaScript programmers make extensive use of event-driven programming to help build responsive web applications. However, standard approaches to sequencing events are messy, and often lead to code that is difficult to understand and maintain. We have found that arrows, a generali…
Type inference and type reconstruction derive static types for program elements that have no static type associated with them. They have a wide range of usage, such as helping to eliminate the burden of manually specifying types, verifying whether a program is type-safe, helping …
Mython is an extensible variant of the Python programming language. Mython achieves extensibility by adding a quotation mechanism that accepts an additional parameter as well as the code being quoted. The additional quotation parameter takes the form of a Mython expression. Unlik…
Behavioral software contracts express properties concerning the flow of values across component (modules, classes, etc) interfaces. These properties are often beyond the reach of theorem provers and are therefore monitored at run-time. When the monitor discovers a contract violat…
Traditional treatment of scoping in programming languages considers two opposite semantics: static scoping, where the scope of a binding is a block of program text, and dynamic scoping, where a binding is in effect during the whole reduction of an expression to a value. Static sc…
In order to construct a test-bed for investigating new programming paradigms for future systems (i.e. those with at least a thousand cores), we are building a Smalltalk virtual machine that attempts to efficiently use a collection of 56-on-chip caches of 64KB each to host a multi…
Scripting languages are playing an increasing role in today's software landscape due to their support for rapid and exploratory development. They typically have lightweight syntax, weak data privacy, dynamic typing, powerful aggregate data types, and allow execution of the comple…
Creating an interpreter is a simple and fast way to implement a dynamic programming language. With this ease also come major drawbacks. Interpreters are significantly slower than compiled machine code because they have a high dispatch overhead and cannot perform optimizations. To…
This paper considers the difficulties linked to the static scheduling strategy of AspectJ and shows how to overcome them by turning to a more dynamic strategy, making it possible to order, cancel, and deploy aspects at runtime. We show that this more dynamic strategy can be obtai…
Predicate dispatching is a generalized form of dynamic dispatch, which has strong limitations when arbitrary predicates of the underlying base language are used. Unlike classes, which enforce subset relationships between their sets of instances, arbitrary predicates generally do …
Customers and stakeholders have substantial investments in, and are comfortable with the performance, security and stability of, industry-standard platforms like the JVM and CLR. While Java and C# developers on those platforms may envy the succinctness, flexibility and productivi…
The Sun Labs Lively Kernel is a new approach to Web programming. It provides a complete platform for Web applications, including dynamic graphics, network access, and development tools, and requires nothing more than available web browsers. We call the system "lively" for three r…