Traits: Tools and Methodology

  • Authors:
  • Andrew P. Black;Nathanael Scharli

  • Affiliations:
  • Oregon Health and Science University;University of Bern

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 26th International Conference on Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Traits are an object-oriented programming language constructthat allow groups of methods to be named and reusedin arbitrary places in an inheritance hierarchy. Classes canuse methods from traits as well as defining their own methodsand instance variables. Traits thus enable a new styleof programming, in which traits rather than classes are theprimary unit of reuse. However, the additional sub-structureprovided by traits is always optional: a class written usingtraits can also be viewed as a flat collection of methods,with no change in its semantics.This paper describes the tool that supports these two alternateviews of a class, called the traits browser, and theprogramming methodology that we are starting to developaround the use of traits.