Abstract:
Habit is a high-level programming language, originally based on Haskell, that was designed to meet the needs of high assurance, very low-level software development. The most recent version of the language report was completed in 2010, and an initial working prototype implementation was developed by the HASP group at PSU. However, there has not been a lot of externally visible news about the language or its implementation since then. In this talk, I will provide an introduction to the goals of Habit (no previous experience is assumed), and an update on the status of its current implementation as we continue to edge towards a broader public release. In particular, this talk will discuss the challenges of meeting the performance requirements for typical systems software; the benefits of programming in a source language with high-level functional abstractions and expressive types; and the role that whole-program optimization can play in bridging between these two worlds.
Bio:
Mark Jones is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon. His primary research focus is on the use of advanced programming language technologies that support the construction and certification of secure and reliable software systems.