Dynamic Type Inference for IDE Programmatic Assistance

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Solution Overview

Problem

Conventional programming technologies lack programmatic assistance for dynamic or late-bound types, which hinders agile programming styles by not providing necessary feedback at critical development stages, restricting flexibility and type safety.

Innovation Solution

A program development system that utilizes dynamic type components to ascertain precise or speculative types at design time, combined with assistance components to offer feedback and automatic code completion, enabling both dynamic and static type assistance within an integrated development environment.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Adaptability or versatility

If dynamically typed languages are used, then programmatic flexibility and ease of use are improved, but type safety and execution efficiency deteriorate

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveprogrammatic flexibilityVSAvoidtype safety

Core Design Contradiction:

Adaptability or versatilityVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The system dynamically determines types at design time through execution analysis and static information, allowing the typing mechanism to adapt between dynamic and static approaches based on the specific context, thus maintaining flexibility while ensuring type safety

Inventive Principle:

Principle #15Dynamics

2Reliability

If statically typed languages are used, then type safety and execution efficiency are improved, but programmatic flexibility and ease of use deteriorate

Engineering Contradiction:

Improvetype safetyVSAvoidprogrammatic flexibility

Core Design Contradiction:

ReliabilityVSAdaptability or versatility

Solution Approach 1:

The system employs dynamic type determination at design time, allowing programmers to work with flexible dynamic typing initially, then transition to static typing as design crystallizes, thus maintaining both flexibility and type safety at different development stages

Inventive Principle:

Principle #15Dynamics

3Ease of operation

If dynamic typing is used without design-time type determination, then ease of use is improved, but programmatic assistance and feedback deteriorate

Engineering Contradiction:

Improveease of useVSAvoidprogrammatic assistance

Core Design Contradiction:

Ease of operationVSLoss of information

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs type determination at design time through execution analysis and static information gathering before actual program execution, thereby preparing type information in advance to enable programmatic assistance while maintaining dynamic typing benefits

Inventive Principle:

Principle #10Preliminary action

Data Source

PatentUS8321836B2Late bound programmatic assistance

Publication Date: 2012.11.27 MICROSOFT TECHNOLOGY LICENSING LLC

AI summary

Programmatic assistance is provided for dynamic typing within an integrated development environment (IDE). Types associated with late bound constructs can be inferred from static information and/or determined from design time execution. Assistance can then be provided as a function of a precise and/or speculative type. Furthermore, dynamic type assistance can be employed in conjunction with static type assistance to facilitate development of a program that supports both late and early binding, for example.