Toward efficient gradual typing for structural types via coercions

Abstract

Gradual typing combines static and dynamic typing in the same program. Siek et al. (2015) describe five criteria for gradually typed languages, including type soundness and the gradual guarantee. A significant number of languages have been developed in academia and industry that support some of these criteria (TypeScript, Typed Racket, Safe TypeScript, Transient Reticulated Python, Thorn, etc.) but relatively few support all the criteria (Nom, Gradualtalk, Guarded Reticulated Python). Of those that do, only Nom does so efficiently. The Nom experiment shows that one can achieve efficient gradual typing in languages with only nominal types, but many languages have structural types: function types, tuples, record and object types, generics, etc.