Workshop on Concepts - WoC 2009

The BLDL/SAGA-geo Workshop on Concepts - WoC 2009 took place Thursday 5.11.09 0900-1800, meeting room 3137 HiB, Department of informatics, University of Bergen. Photos.

Formal specifications have long been considered beneficial for software development and software quality. A central motivation has been the possibility for formal verification. Other uses such as testing have been on the agenda. Until recently most specifications had to be kept separate from the code, and often needed extra notation to couple the specifications with the code. This is on the verge of changing, with several attempts at integrating specifications as annotations or testing frameworks, following the lead of languages like Eiffel and Extended ML. With the proposed inclusion of Concepts into C++0x, formal specifications would for the first time be integrated in a main stream language.

Early experiments with concept based software development have shown significant productivity increases. And the advent of tools for concepts is opening up new areas like high level software optimisation, software testing, software evolution tools etc.

However, concepts have now been removed from C++0x. This opens up for a series of research questions, hopefully leading to a better understanding of concepts, their implications for current and future software practices and code bases.

The purpose of this workshop is to get an overview of the various proposals for Concepts in C++, the main issues leading to their ousting from the C++0x standard, and related issues such as value-added benefits and tooling problems. The workshop is to form a backdrop for a European research proposal investigating concepts. One aim of the research would be to come up with a Concept proposal acceptable to the C++ community.

WoC, Thursday 5.11.09 900-1800 (with breaks), meeting room 3137 HiB.

Topics:

Organisers:

  • Magne Haveraaen (UiB, N)
  • Peter Gottschling (TU Dresden, D)
  • Sibylle Schupp (TU HH, D)

Confirmed participants

  • Anya Helene Bagge (UiB, N)
  • Eva Burrows (UiB, N)
  • Valentin David (UiB, N)
  • René Heinzl (Shenteq, Au)
  • Paul Klint (CWI, NL)
  • Inge Norum (Schlumberger, N)
  • Markus Roggenbach (Swansea U, UK)
  • Andrew Lumsdaine (Indiana, USA)
  • Jonathan I. Maletic (Kent, USA)
  • Jan Christian Meyer (NTNU, N)
  • Don Sannella (Edinburg, UK)
  • Philipp Schwaha (Shenteq, Sl)
  • Carl Seger (Intel, USA)
  • Bjarne Stroustrup (TAMU, USA)
  • Andrew Sutton (Kent, USA)
  • Jeremiah Willcock (Indiana, USA)
  • Russel Winder (consulting, UK)
  • Joseph Young (UiB, N)
  • Marcin Zalewski (Indiana, USA)

The workshop consisted of position presentations with follow-up discussions. This was a by invitation only workshop. Direct all contact about the workshop to Magne Haveraaen.

Abstracts of WoC position papers

  • Anya Helene Bagge

    Axiom-Based Testing and Optimisation with Concepts (slides)

    An obvious use of axioms in concepts is as a basis for automated testing. Axioms are used to generate test oracle code, and then test cases are generated for each set of types that model a concept. Generating test code is surprisingly straightforward.

    There are still some open issues in concept-based testing, though, such as how to deal with auto concepts, and what is the best way to express axioms for object-oriented code and exceptions?

    Another use of axioms is as rewrite rules for optimisation of programs. This is limited to (conditional) equational axioms, but even such axioms may not be immediately useful for optimisation. A programmer has no control over how and when rewriting is done, and the compiler may not be able to see on its own whether an axiom is useful for optimisation or not. Attaching strategies to axioms, or employing some kind of classification scheme can alleviate this problem and make axioms useful in optimisation.

  • Eva Burrows

    Exploiting Dependencies as Concepts for Parallel Programming (slides)

    We sketch a hardware independent parallel programming model based on the theory of Data Dependency Algebras (DDAs) and their embeddings. Using axiom-based concepts to define and implement DDAs, one has not only an elegant programming style for efficient massive-core programming, but also the tool of axiom-based testing to ensure quality.

  • Peter Gottschling

    The benefits of concepts (slides)

    The presentation briefly illustrates the enormous potential of C++ concepts, esp. of semantic concepts. We give a short overview what can be already achieved with the current concept proposal and give ideas of new language features that augment this potential further.

  • Magne Haveraaen

    Domain Engineering with Concepts (slides)

    Formal methods in general have been around for a long time, but even though they promise to improve software quality, they have never become part of main-stream software development. Concepts may change that. Here we give an account of the SAGA project where we are exploring the use of concepts for the development of C++ software. We are actively using algebraic specification methods for domain engineering, resulting in a radically different design of the software based on new domain specific abstractions, software testing, generating reusable test oracles, code optimisation, getting rid of the computational overhead induced by the heavy use of abstractions in the software. An important point being that we are reusing the same specifications for all these purposes. This comes on top of the significant programming productivity gains resulting from the improved software design.

  • René Heinzl, Philipp Schwaha

    Multi-Dimensional and Multi-Topological Programming (slides)

    Various areas of scientific computing, such as algebraic or differential topology, differential geometry or geometrical algebra, each have different notations and requirements. Our work focuses on the extraction of all the necessary (mathematical) concepts to enable fully multi-dimensional and multi-topological programming. We are currently working on realizing traversal capabilities which transcend current implementations.

  • Inge Norum

    Potential use of C++ Concepts in Petrel, a large-scale software product

    Petrel is a commercial large-scale scientific software application largely programmed in C++. A brief overview of Petrel's usage of C++ (templates) and associated tool set is provided. As an industrial user of C++, some envisaged benefits of a C++ Concepts extension are presented in light of our experience with C++ templates. The importance of tool support is raised, and is viewed as a deciding factor for our use of generic programming.

  • Markus Roggenbach

    Logics for specification (slides)

    In this talk we review how various specification formalisms can be expressed as institutions: equational logic, process algebra, and finally a formalism combining processes and data. We conclude with a brief speculation how these ideas can be useful for giving concepts a formal semantics and for re-using tools for reasoning about concepts.

  • Don Sannella

    Interfaces and Extended ML (slides)

    This is a position paper giving our views on the uses and makeup of module interfaces. The position espoused is inspired by our work on the Extended ML (EML) formal software development framework and by ideas in the algebraic foundations of specification and formal development. The present state of interfaces in EML is outlined and set in the context of plans for a more general EML-like framework with axioms in interfaces taken from an arbitrary logical system formulated as an institution. Some more speculative plans are sketched concerning the simultaneous use of multiple institutions in specification and development.

  • Sibylle Schupp

    The Function Concept in C++ - an Empirical Study (slides)

    In this note, I will report on the results of a small empirical study that assesses performance, expressivity, and convenience of a function concept. The study shows that the function concept is faster and at least as expressive as the best function datatype, but also less convenient to use.

  • Bjarne Stroustrup

    Design aims for concepts (slides)

    The presentation is based on the 2003 paper and what we have learned since. What do we really want? Logically? Performance wise (runtime and compile time)? How can we scale use? How close to current C++?

  • Andrew Sutton

    Emulating Concepts in C++0x (slides)

    The Origin C++0x Libraries are a framework for experimenting with generic programming and library design in C++0x. The Origin.Concepts library provides features for emulating (via templates and programming idioms) nearly all of the features of the concepts proposal for C++0x. The implementation of this library leverages many of the new features found in the current C++ Draft Standard including variadic templates, type deduction, extended SFINAE and forwarding. The intent of the effort is to provide a framework for experimenting with the underlying semantics of concepts and their use within generic libraries. In the process of developing this library, we have been able to duplicate virtually every problem addressed in the WG21 publications regarding the syntax, semantics, and use of concepts, making it a viable resource for experimenting with the underlying technologies in terms both language and library development.

    Issues addressed (and yet to be addressed) during the development of the Origin.Concepts library include deductive and adaptive typename declarations, strong and weak interface checks, explicit and automatic concepts, negative concept maps, the implicit duality of requirements (assertion and elimination), and the definition of archetype systems. In the implementation of concept systems, we have identified use cases for requiring member variables, static members, checks on the visibility of members, and the need to syntactically differentiate abstractions.

  • Jeremiah Willcock

    Reusable, Generic Program Analyses and Transformations (slides)

    The optimizations in modern compilers are constructed for a predetermined set of primitive types. As a result, programmers are unable to exploit optimizations for user-defined types where these optimizations would be correct and beneficial. Moreover, because the set of optimizations is also fixed, programmers are unable to incorporate new optimizations into the compiler. To address these limitations, we apply the reuse methodologies from generic programming to compiler analyses and optimizations. To enable compilers to apply optimizations to classes of types rather than particular types, we define optimizations in terms of generic interface descriptions (similar to C++ concepts or Haskell type classes). By extending these interface descriptions to include associated program analysis and transformation fragments, we enable compilers to incorporate user-defined transformations and analyses. Since these transformations are explicitly associated with interface descriptions, they can be applied in generic fashion by the compiler. We demonstrate that classical compiler optimizations, when generalized using this framework, can apply to a broad range of types, both built-in and user-defined. Finally, we present an initial implementation, the principles of which are generalizable to other compilers.

  • Russel Winder

    Will concepts be missed from C++0x? (slides)

    I am an observer of C++ rather than a researcher evolving it. As a consultant and analyst, clients often ask "which programming language should be used" for various of their projects, so keeping abreast of the directions of languages is an important activity. Hence my interest in C++0x and concepts. I don't actively use C++ these days, being more in the Java/Scala/Groovy and Python arenas.

    The introduction of templates to C++ removed the need to "hack" with macros, and allowed the compiler to perform checking as well as analysed code generation. This was a good thing. However, template parameters have always been a bit of an enigma -- seemingly untyped and yet strongly typed. In principle concepts bring an explicit type system to template parameters. In practice it seems compilers will get hugely bigger to handle concepts, arguably too big.

    It is unsurprising, at least from the outside, that concepts were withdrawn from the C++0x standard. They were too new, there was insufficient experience with which to standardize. Conversely, the introduction of a threads standard comes far too late. C++0x has threads and futures, but shared memory multi-threading is the problem not the solution to parallel programming. Moreover concepts do not really add anything to programming in a post Multicore Revolution world.

    The main problems for C++ are the complexity of the C++ language, the huge take up of Java, and (more recently) the arrival of the functional languages (most notably OCaml and Haskell) as commercially viable languages. By most metrics Java and C are "kings of the hill" though Scala, C#, Python, Jython, Ruby, JRuby, Perl, Haskell, OCaml, PHP, JavaScript are also (and increasingly) important.

    Will concepts be missed from C++0x? Unlikely, as most people using C++ don't really know what they are.

  • Marcin Zalewski

    Value Types, Computational Bases, and Concepts: What is the Best Way to Glue Code Together? (slides)

    In this talk I will briefly summarize the taxonomy of ideas introduced by Stepanov and McJones in their recent book "Elements of Programming." Then, I will ask how do these ideas impact generic programming, and how should they be reflected in programming constructs. In particular, I will talk about value types, computational basis, and concepts, and about the possibility of corresponding language mechanisms that are "higher kind" than concepts.