Changeset 22444f4 for doc/generic_types/generic_types.tex

Timestamp:

Apr 5, 2017, 12:17:57 PM (7 years ago)

Author:

Aaron Moss <a3moss@…>

Branches:

ADT, aaron-thesis, arm-eh, ast-experimental, cleanup-dtors, deferred_resn, demangler, enum, forall-pointer-decay, jacob/cs343-translation, jenkins-sandbox, master, new-ast, new-ast-unique-expr, new-env, no_list, persistent-indexer, pthread-emulation, qualifiedEnum, resolv-new, with_gc

Children:

7a026ff

Parents:

0a4c59b

Message:

Added Java and D to related work

File:

• doc/generic_types/generic_types.tex (modified) (1 diff)

doc/generic_types/generic_types.tex

@@ -860 +860 @@
 Cyclone also provides capabilities for polymorphic functions and existential types~\citep{Grossman06}, similar in concept to \CFA's @forall@ functions and generic types. Cyclone existential types can include function pointers in a construct similar to a virtual function table, but these pointers must be explicitly initialized at some point in the code, a tedious and potentially error-prone process. Furthermore, Cyclone's polymorphic functions and types are restricted in that they may only abstract over types with the same layout and calling convention as @void*@, in practice only pointer types and @int@ - in \CFA terms, all Cyclone polymorphism must be dtype-static. This design provides the efficiency benefits discussed in Section~\ref{sec:generic-apps} for dtype-static polymorphism, but is more restrictive than \CFA's more general model.
 
-Apple's Objective-C \citep{obj-c-book} is another industrially successful set of extensions to C. The Objective-C language model is a fairly radical departure from C, adding object-orientation and message-passing. Objective-C implements variadic functions using the C @va_arg@ mechanism, and did not support type-checked generics until recently \citep{xcode7}, historically using less-efficient and more error-prone runtime checking of object types instead. The GObject framework \citep{GObject} also adds object-orientation with runtime type-checking and reference-counting garbage-collection to C; these are much more intrusive feature additions than those provided by \CFA, in addition to the runtime overhead of reference-counting. The Vala programming language \citep{Vala} compiles to GObject-based C, and so adds the burden of learning a separate language syntax to the aforementioned demerits of GObject as a modernization path for existing C code-bases.
-
-Go \citep{Go} and Rust \citep{Rust} are both modern, compiled languages with abstraction features similar to \CFA traits, \emph{interfaces} in Go and \emph{traits} in Rust. However, both languages represent dramatic departures from C in terms of language model, and neither has the same level of compatibility with C as \CFA. Go is a garbage-collected language, imposing the associated runtime overhead, and complicating foreign-function calls with the necessity of accounting for data transfer between the managed Go runtime and the unmanaged C runtime. Furthermore, while generic types and functions are available in Go, they are limited to a small fixed set provided by the compiler, with no language facility to define more. Rust is not garbage-collected, and thus has a lighter-weight runtime that is more easily interoperable with C. It also possesses much more powerful abstraction capabilities for writing generic code than Go. On the other hand, Rust's borrow-checker, while it does provide strong safety guarantees, is complex and difficult to learn, and imposes a distinctly idiomatic programming style on Rust. \CFA, with its more modest safety features, is significantly easier to port C code to, while maintaining the idiomatic style of the original source.
+Apple's Objective-C \citep{obj-c-book} is another industrially successful set of extensions to C. The Objective-C language model is a fairly radical departure from C, adding object-orientation and message-passing. Objective-C implements variadic functions using the C @va_arg@ mechanism, and did not support type-checked generics until recently \citep{xcode7}, historically using less-efficient and more error-prone runtime checking of object types instead. The GObject framework \citep{GObject} also adds object-orientation with runtime type-checking and reference-counting garbage-collection to C; these are much more intrusive feature additions than those provided by \CFA, in addition to the runtime overhead of reference-counting. The Vala programming language \citep{Vala} compiles to GObject-based C, and so adds the burden of learning a separate language syntax to the aforementioned demerits of GObject as a modernization path for existing C code-bases. Java \citep{Java8} has had generic types and variadic functions since Java~5; Java's generic types are type-checked at compilation and type-erased at runtime, similar to \CFA's, though in Java each object carries its own table of method pointers, while \CFA passes the method pointers separately so as to maintain a C-compatible struct layout. Java variadic functions are simply syntactic sugar for an array of a single type, and therefore less useful than \CFA's heterogeneously-typed variadic functions. Java is also a garbage-collected, object-oriented language, with the associated resource usage and C-interoperability burdens.
+
+D \citep{D}, Go \citep{Go}, and Rust \citep{Rust} are modern, compiled languages with abstraction features similar to \CFA traits, \emph{interfaces} in D and Go and \emph{traits} in Rust. However, each language represents dramatic departures from C in terms of language model, and none has the same level of compatibility with C as \CFA. D and Go are garbage-collected languages, imposing the associated runtime overhead. The necessity of accounting for data transfer between the managed Go runtime and the unmanaged C runtime complicates foreign-function interface between Go and C. Furthermore, while generic types and functions are available in Go, they are limited to a small fixed set provided by the compiler, with no language facility to define more. D restricts garbage collection to its own heap by default, while Rust is not garbage-collected, and thus has a lighter-weight runtime that is more easily interoperable with C. Rust also possesses much more powerful abstraction capabilities for writing generic code than Go. On the other hand, Rust's borrow-checker, while it does provide strong safety guarantees, is complex and difficult to learn, and imposes a distinctly idiomatic programming style on Rust. \CFA, with its more modest safety features, is significantly easier to port C code to, while maintaining the idiomatic style of the original source.
 
 \section{Conclusion \& Future Work}