Traditional assignment considered harmful

  • Authors:

  • Scott M. Pike;Wayne D. Heym;Bruce Adcock;Derek Bronish;Jason Kirschenbaum;Bruce W. Weide

  • Affiliations:

  • Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA;The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA;The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA;The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA;The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA;The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 24th ACM SIGPLAN conference companion on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications
  • Year:
  • 2009

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Data movement in nearly all modern imperative languages is based on a single primitive: traditional assignment. (With traditional assignment, data are moved between variables by copying.) Unfortunately, traditional assignment poses many known software engineering drawbacks with respect to efficiency for value types, and with respect to modular reasoning for reference types. Moreover, its entrenched legacy has stifled serious regard of potentially superior data-movement primitives. Exploration of the complete design space for data-movement primitives supports the following conclusions: (1) traditional assignment is fundamentally flawed, and (2) any other data-movement primitive would be better.