Is Structural Subtyping Useful? An Empirical Study

Authors:
Donna Malayeri;Jonathan Aldrich
Affiliations:
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA PA 15213;Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA PA 15213
Venue:
ESOP '09 Proceedings of the 18th European Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems: Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2009
Year:
2009

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Abstract

Structural subtyping is popular in research languages, but all mainstream object-oriented languages use nominal subtyping. Since languages with structural subtyping are not in widespread use, the empirical questions of whether and how structural subtyping is useful have thus far remained unanswered. This study aims to provide answers to these questions. We identified several criteria that are indicators that nominally typed programs could benefit from structural subtyping, and performed automated and manual analyses of open-source Java programs based on these criteria. Our results suggest that these programs could indeed be improved with the addition of structural subtyping. We hope this study will provide guidance for language designers who are considering use of this subtyping discipline.