Building a Typed Scripting Language
Zachary Palmer · 2015
Since the 1990s, scripting languages (e.g. Python, Ruby, JavaScript, and many others) have gained widespread popularity. Features such as ad-hoc data ma-nipulation, dynamic structural typing, and terse syntax permit rapid engineering and improve developer productivity. Unfortunately, programs written in scripting languages execute slower and are less scalable than those written in traditional lan-guages (such as C or Java) due to the challenge of statically analyzing scripting languages ’ semantics. Although various research projects have made progress on this front, corner cases in the semantics of existing scripting languages continue to defy static analysis and software engineers must generally still choose between program performance and programmer performance when selecting a language. We address that dichotomy in this dissertation by designing a scripting lan-guage with the intent of statically analyzing it. We select a set of core primitives in which common language features such as object-orientation and case analysis can be encoded and give a sound and decidable type inference system for it. Our type