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Back to [[conference:committee:2015-proposals]]\\
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**Title**: Language integration and migration\\
**Proposer**: [[2015:Laurence Tratt]]\\
**Type**: Tutorial\\
**Duration**: 90 mins\\
**Description**: \\
Programming languages are islands, each disconnected from the rest. We
choose a language for a task and, for better or worse, stick with it.
Communicating between programs written in different languages is such a
slow, arduous, task that we avoid doing it whenever possible.\\
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In this tutorial I will show how language composition can lower, and even
remove, the barriers between languages, using compositions of 1) Python
and Prolog and 2) Python and PHP as concrete examples. We have pioneered
new approaches to the two major challenges in language composition:
editing and running composed programs.\\
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Using our novel editor 'Eco', users can write PHP source files that can
contain Python functions wherever PHP functions are valid. In other words,
users can mix the two languages even within a single file. The two
languages can be intertwined in surprising ways. For example, variable
scopes are defined across the languages.\\
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We then run programs upon a composed meta-tracing VM. Our results suggest
that performance of composed PHP + Python programs not only exceeds that
of the standard php.net interpreter, but is often competitive with high
performing mono-language VMs.\\
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I will conclude by examining the possible uses of a PHP and Python
composition. For example, as well as making languages first-class
elements, language composition offers the potential to gradually migrate a
system written in a legacy language to a new language. In other words,
rather than rewriting everything from scratch, one can migrate small
sections at a time to a different language, while maintaining good
performance.\\
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