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conference paper

Use Site Checking Considered Harmful

Racordon, Dimi  
•
Chung, Benjamin
Edwards, Jonathan
•
Taeumel, Marcel
October 17, 2024
Onward! 2024 - Proceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software, Co-located with: SPLASH 2024
ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software

Static type checking aims to detect nonsensical operations based on their domains at compile time. While its benefits no longer need to be argued, it comes with expressiveness limitations that can only be lifted at the expense of complexity. This problem is particularly antithetical to generic programming, where algorithms and data structures are designed in the most general setting possible. In response, some systems have adopted a form of static duck typing: generic definitions are written against assumed interfaces that are only type checked with concrete types at their ultimate use sites. This essay claims that such an approach, which we refer to as use site checking, is harmful to user experience. We study four main problems caused by use site checking and show how they relate to similar well-known issues in dynamically typed languages. We then look at existing language constructs to discuss how statically typed languages may address these shortcomings.

  • Details
  • Metrics
Type
conference paper
DOI
10.1145/3689492.3689814
Scopus ID

2-s2.0-85212583337

Author(s)
Racordon, Dimi  

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Chung, Benjamin

University of Washington

Editors
Edwards, Jonathan
•
Taeumel, Marcel
Date Issued

2024-10-17

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery, Inc

Published in
Onward! 2024 - Proceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software, Co-located with: SPLASH 2024
ISBN of the book

9798400712159

Start page

275

End page

287

Subjects

dynamic typing

•

expression problem

•

generic programming

•

static typing

•

type checking

•

type safety

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LAMP1  
Event nameEvent acronymEvent placeEvent date
ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software

Pasadena, United States

2024-10-23 - 2024-10-25

FunderFunding(s)Grant NumberGrant URL

Swiss National Science Foundation

TMAG-2-209506/1

Available on Infoscience
January 26, 2025
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/244782
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