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How (and why) developers use the dynamic features of programming languages: the case of smalltalk

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Abstract

The dynamic and reflective features of programming languages are powerful constructs that programmers often mention as extremely useful. However, the ability to modify a program at runtime can be both a boon—in terms of flexibility—, and a curse—in terms of tool support. For instance, usage of these features hampers the design of type systems, the accuracy of static analysis techniques, or the introduction of optimizations by compilers. In this paper, we perform an empirical study of a large Smalltalk codebase—often regarded as the poster-child in terms of availability of these features—, in order to assess how much these features are actually used in practice, whether some are used more than others, and in which kinds of projects. In addition, we performed a qualitative analysis of a representative sample of usages of dynamic features in order to uncover (1) the principal reasons that drive people to use dynamic features, and (2) whether and how these dynamic feature usages can be removed or converted to safer usages. These results are useful to make informed decisions about which features to consider when designing language extensions or tool support.

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Notes

  1. Available at http://www.squeaksource.com/ff.

  2. http://www.pharo-project.org

  3. All subclasses of TestCase are considered to represent tests, no matter how the rest of the project is categorized.

  4. In Smalltalk the root superclass is nil.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Romain Robbes is partially funded by FONDECYT Project 11110463, Chile. Éric Tanter is partially funded by FONDECYT Project 1110051, Chile. David Röthlisberger is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, SNF Project No. PBBEP2_135018.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. PLEIAD Laboratory, Computer Science Department (DCC), University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

    Oscar Callaú, Romain Robbes, Éric Tanter & David Röthlisberger

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  1. Oscar Callaú
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  2. Romain Robbes
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  3. Éric Tanter
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  4. David Röthlisberger
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Correspondence to Oscar Callaú.

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Editor: Tao Xie, Thomas Zimmermann and Arie van Deursen

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Callaú, O., Robbes, R., Tanter, É. et al. How (and why) developers use the dynamic features of programming languages: the case of smalltalk. Empir Software Eng 18, 1156–1194 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-012-9203-2

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