The Rational Programmer, An Investigative Method for Programming Language Prag...
summary
Introduces the Rational Programmer: an algorithmic simulation that mutates Type Racket programs to inject type-interface and code-level bugs, producing 1M+ mutants and downsampling to 100k sampled scenarios (≈70% code bugs, 30% interface bugs). It runs on a cluster for weeks, compares natural semantics with blame, transient (rewrite) checks, and erasure semantics, and measures success as converting runtime errors into static type errors. Result: natural+blame gives the largest debugging win (up to ~20% on interface bugs); erasure finds similar numbers of failures but provides poor localization.
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chapters (10)
- 0:00PL pragmatics overview
- 4:22Rational programmer method
- 9:20Gradual typing mechanisms
- 18:29Natural semantics vs performance
- 21:00Debugging gradual typing hypothesis
- 26:55Mutation testing scenarios
- 34:45Strategy to algorithm
- 38:42Simulation results
- 42:57Rational programmer rationale
- 47:07Q&A
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