CAREER: An Extensible Compiler Framework for Modular Seamless Language Extensions

软件开发是一个昂贵且容易出错的过程，至少部分原因是程序员对问题的高级理解与编码问题解决方案的相对低级语言之间存在巨大的语义差距。 没有一种语言包含程序员所面临的独特问题可能需要的所有通用和特定领域的结构。因此，他们不能“说出他们的意思”，而必须在较低的抽象层次上将他们的想法编码为编程习惯用法。 简单地说，这浪费了时间和金钱，是许多错误的根源。该项目通过开发可扩展语言的框架来直接解决这个问题，该框架使程序员能够通过将新的语言功能导入到他们的编程语言中来使用其抽象级别已经提高到更接近他们的问题域的语言。 这些功能包括特定于领域的语言结构、语义分析以确保正确使用新的语言结构和优化，以及代码转换以确保生成有效的目标代码。 此外，这些语言扩展是模块化的，因此程序员可以很容易地将其导入到他或她的编程环境中并进行分析，以确保它们不会相互干扰。这样一个完整的现代语言的可扩展编译器框架也将成为编程语言研究的催化剂。 它将使研究人员能够以一种完整的而不是玩具的语言来研究他们的想法，并且作为语言的扩展，他们可以很容易地传播给其他研究人员和用户。

Software development is an expensive and error-prone process at least partly because of the large semantic gap between the programmer's high-level understanding of the problem and the relatively low-level language in which the problem solutions are encoded. No language contains all of the general purpose and domain specific constructs that may be needed for the unique problems faced by programmers. Thus, they cannot ``say what they mean'' but must encode their ideas as programming idioms at a lower level of abstraction. Simply stated, this wastes time and money and is the source of many errors. This project is directly addressing this problem by developing framework for extensible languages that enables programmers to use languages whose level of abstraction has been raised closer to their problem domain by importing new language features into their programming language. These features include domain specific language constructs, semantic analyses to ensure the correct usage of new language constructs and optimizations and code transformations to ensure that efficient target code is generated. Furthermore, these language extensions are modular and thus can be easily imported by programmer into his or her programming environment and analyzed to ensure that they will not interfere with one another. Such an extensible compiler framework for a complete modern language will also be a catalyst for research in programming languages. It will allow researchers to study their ideas in a complete, not a toy, language and, as language extensions, they can be easily disseminated to other researchers and users.