Apr 6, 2014
Jeremy Siek: Design and Evaluation of Gradual Typing for Python
I present Reticulated Python, a lightweight system for experimenting with gradual-typed dialects of Python.
The dialects are syntactically identical to Python 3 but give static and dynamic?semantics to the type annotations
already present in Python 3. Reticulated Python consists of a typechecker, a source-to-source translator that inserts casts,
and Python libraries that implement the?casts. Using Reticulated Python, we study a gradual type system that features
structurally-typed objects and type inference for local variables. We evaluate two dynamic semantics for casts: one?based
on Siek and Taha (2007) and a new design, using transient casts, that does not require proxy objects. We
evaluate these designs with two third-party Python programs: the CherryPy web?framework and a library of
statistical functions.