[Pl-seminar] 11/20: Jonathan Edwards, "Dynamic => Static"

[Vincent St-Amour]

Reminder: Jonathan Edwards is speaking tomorrow at 11:45.

Vincent


At Wed, 13 Nov 2013 17:22:44 -0500,
Vincent St-Amour wrote:
> 
> NUPRL Seminar presents
> 
> Jonathan Edwards
> MIT
> 
> 11:45 - 1:30
> Wednesday, 11/20
> Room 366 WVH (http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/wand/directions.html)
> 
> Dynamic => Static
> 
> The schism between static and dynamic languages has been long and bitter.
> Static types provide performance, safety, and intelligent IDE assistance.
> Dynamic languages are simpler and make it easier to use polymorphism and
> metaprogramming. I observe that in dynamic application frameworks like
> Rails the essential uses of polymorphism and metaprogramming occur (or
> could occur) during an initialization phase of the program. For example,
> generating classes for an Object Relational Mapping. Accordingly I
> demonstrate a language that is dynamic during an initial phase and then
> static henceforth. Initialization is performed by a bounded partial
> evaluation that computes all types, instantiates all generics, and executes
> all metaprogramming. What remains after this partial evaluation is a
> statically type-checked runtime. A notable (but perhaps orthogonal) feature
> is that types are implicit, never being mentioned within the language
> syntax or error messages. This approach may unite much that is good in both
> static and dynamic programming. This is early-stage work and I welcome
> advice on its direction.
> 
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