Programming Languages

Extensibility and Modularity in Programming Languages

In this seminar, we study questions of extensibility and modularity in programming languages, as well as proposed solutions, by reading research papers on the topic.

Many programming languages offer features which allow to extend the program in a safe way and without modifying existing code. For starters, there are two dimensions of extensibility to be considered: adding new variants, and adding new operations. The so-called Expression Problem[1] asks how to achieve both in the same language while preserving the (type) safety and no-modification properties (and possibly others). Programming languages are often biased towards one of the two extensibility dimensions in that their constructs offer a straightforward way to either add new variants or new operations, but not both. Nevertheless, even for those languages there are encodings which, via sticking to a certain programming discipline/pattern, allow the programmer to independently add variants and operations. Such encodings usually come with limitations, e.g. in the specific form of variants or operations supported, and/or costs, e.g. in the form of the complexity of the necessary language constructs. A lot of research on the Expression Problem is about such trade-offs.

This is all part of a larger research effort on how to best group a program into modules, which can be considered and worked on independently of each other (e.g., using separate compilation) and which only communicate via well-defined interfaces, and how to design and/or use programming languages and their module systems accordingly.

More details will be announced through this page.

Instructors

Julian Jabs
AlumniJulian Jabs (Office: Room B221)
Prof. Klaus Ostermann
HeadKlaus Ostermann

Structure of course

This seminar will be conducted as a paper reading group with weekly meetings.

Each week one of the students is the discussion leader, who familiarizes herself/himself with the paper’s content in greater depth. The other participants should also read the paper and prepare questions for the discussion leader. During the session, the discussion leader will summarize the main points of each section, be ready to answer the other participants’ questions, keep the discussion on track, and point out additional insights gained by her/his in-depth preparation.

At the end of the semester, each participant will write a term paper on the topic he prepared as discussion leader. It is also possible to accompany this with some artefact, e.g. a mini software project, that showcases some of the extensibility or modularity aspects discussed in the term paper.

Other info

Language: English
Credits: 3 LP (new PO), 4 LP (old PO)
LSF entry
Weekly meeting: 12:45-14:15 Room A302
Contact email: julian (dot) jabs (at) uni-tuebingen (dot) de
(Instructor’s note: I’m a native speaker of German, so you can write me in German if you want to.)

Kick-off meeting

17.10.2017 16:15-18:00, Room A302. Introduction slides

Seminar schedule

Please send me and the discussion leader a short summary and questions/what you want to discuss, until 2 days before the meeting.

26.10.2017
On the Criteria to be Used in Decomposing Systems into Modules, Communications of the ACM.

Discussion leader: Julian.

2.11.2017
Modules for Standard ML, Symposium on LISP and functional programming.

Discussion leader: Jonas L.

9.11.2017
Object-Oriented Programming Versus Abstract Data Types, Symposium of the REX Project (Research and Education in Concurrent Systems).

Discussion leader: Jonas B.

16.11.2017
The Essence of the Visitor Pattern, Computer Software and Applications Conference, download link

Discussion leader: Roman.

23.11.2017
Cancelled.

30.11.2017
Data Types à la Carte, Journal of Functional Programming

Discussion leader: Lukas.

7.12.2017
Extensible Algebraic Datatypes with Defaults, International Conference on Functional Programming

Discussion leader: Roman.

14.12.2017
Information on how to write your term paper. Slides on academic writing

After that meeting: Time for you to write the term paper.

11.1.2018
Extensibility for the Masses: Practical Extensibility with Object Algebras, European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, download link

Discussion leader: Jonas B.

From here the list is preliminary and might be subject to change (for instance, due to unplanned absence of me).

18.1.2018
The Expression Problem, Trivially!, International Conference on Modularity

Discussion leader: Jonas L.

Literature

This is an (incomplete) list of papers to choose from, plus other relevant literature.

Information on how to read papers

References

  1. P. Wadler, The Expression Problem, note to Java-genericity mailing list (Author’s archived version) ↩