[TYPES] Object-oriented calculi

[Daniel Yokomizo]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 12:54 AM, Tim Chevalier <catamorphism at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/22/08, Daniel Yokomizo <daniel.yokomizo at gmail.com> wrote:
>  > [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list ]
>
> >
>  >  Hi,
>  >
>  >     I'm currently defining a minimalist object-oriented calculus and
>  >  wanted to know if there were other research on this area, besides
>  >  Cardelli's and Nordhagen's work. I know some work on formalizations of
>  >  object systems but found few pointers in calculi. In particular I was
>  >  looking for work calculi that aren't extensions to other calculi (e.g.
>  >  lambda, pi) to express OO constructs, but calculi that are
>  >  fundamentally distinct and foundational (in the  sense that the
>  >  calculus defines only the strictly necessary and things like effects,
>  >  type systems are defined as extensions).
>
>  It's so obvious that I hesitated to reply on-list, but I assume you've
>  looked at Featherweight Java, as detailed in ch. 19 of Pierce's _Types
>  and Programming Languages_ (and elsewhere). That chapter contains
>  citations to related work, too. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding your
>  question...

Hi,

    Yes, I'm familiar with FWJ, but I don't consider it foundational
(as it includes a type system, so it isn't the smallest set of
building blocks that allows us to build other abstractions upon it, as
we can remove the type system and still have a complete calculus). It
just didn't occur to me to consider it, thanks for the reminder.
    Anyway I'm looking for something even more lightweight, probably
with a single expression language (FWJ separates the class language
and the expression language, we can't mix them arbitrarily). My
research resulted in a quite interesting and minimalistic calculus,
but it seems so obvious that I'm surprised to be unable to find
anything similar in the literature.

>  Cheers,
>  Tim
>
>  --
>  Tim Chevalier * http://cs.pdx.edu/~tjc * Often in error, never in doubt
>  "What is this jest in majesty? This ass in passion? How do God and
>  Devil combine to form a live dog?" -- Vladimir Nabokov

Best regards,
Daniel Yokomizo.