Article

Tasks: language support for event-driven programming

Authors:

Jeffrey Fischer,

Rupak Majumdar,

Todd MillsteinAuthors Info & Claims

PEPM '07: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGPLAN symposium on Partial evaluation and semantics-based program manipulation

Pages 134 - 143

https://doi.org/10.1145/1244381.1244403

Published: 15 January 2007 Publication History

Abstract

The event-driven programming style is pervasive as an efficient method for interacting with the environment. Unfortunately, the event-driven style severely complicates program maintenance and understanding, as it requires each logical flow of control to be fragmented across multiple independent callbacks.

We propose tasks as a new programming model for organizing event-driven programs. Tasks are a variant of cooperative multi-threading and allow each logical control flow to be modularized in the traditional manner, including usage of standard control mechanisms like procedures and exceptions. At the same time, by using method annotations, task-based programs can be automatically and modularly translated into efficient event-based code, using a form of continuation passing style (CPS) translation. A linkable scheduler architecture permits tasks to be used in many different contexts.

We have instantiated our model as a backward-compatible extension to Java, called TaskJava. We illustrate the benefits of our language through a formalization in an extension to Featherweight Java, and through a case study based on an open-source web server.

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Cited By

Agrawal ANandivada V(2023)UWOmppro: UWOmp++ with Point-to-Point Synchronization, Reduction and SchedulesProceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques10.1109/PACT58117.2023.00011(27-38)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/PACT58117.2023.00011
Malthora RCherukuri M(2023)Metric Suite for Event-Driven Software Systems2023 International Conference on Advances in Computation, Communication and Information Technology (ICAICCIT)10.1109/ICAICCIT60255.2023.10466151(1140-1145)Online publication date: 23-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICAICCIT60255.2023.10466151
Wang KWang K(2023)Models of Embedded SystemsEmbedded and Real-Time Operating Systems10.1007/978-3-031-28701-5_4(99-114)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28701-5_4
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Index Terms

Tasks: language support for event-driven programming
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Management of computing and information systems
      1. Software management
2. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
        Control structures
        Modules / packages

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cover image ACM Conferences

PEPM '07: Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGPLAN symposium on Partial evaluation and semantics-based program manipulation

January 2007

180 pages

ISBN:9781595936202

DOI:10.1145/1244381

Conference Chairs:
G. Ramalingam,
Eelco Visser

Copyright © 2007 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 15 January 2007

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PEPM07: Partial Evaluation and Program Manipulation

January 15 - 16, 2007

Nice, France

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Overall Acceptance Rate 66 of 120 submissions, 55%

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Cited By

Agrawal ANandivada V(2023)UWOmppro: UWOmp++ with Point-to-Point Synchronization, Reduction and SchedulesProceedings of the 32nd International Conference on Parallel Architectures and Compilation Techniques10.1109/PACT58117.2023.00011(27-38)Online publication date: 21-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/PACT58117.2023.00011
Malthora RCherukuri M(2023)Metric Suite for Event-Driven Software Systems2023 International Conference on Advances in Computation, Communication and Information Technology (ICAICCIT)10.1109/ICAICCIT60255.2023.10466151(1140-1145)Online publication date: 23-Nov-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICAICCIT60255.2023.10466151
Wang KWang K(2023)Models of Embedded SystemsEmbedded and Real-Time Operating Systems10.1007/978-3-031-28701-5_4(99-114)Online publication date: 15-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-28701-5_4
Hosobe H(2020)Testing Event-Driven Programs in ProcessingProceedings of the 2020 European Symposium on Software Engineering10.1145/3393822.3432338(6-11)Online publication date: 6-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3393822.3432338
Carrero MMusicante Mdos Santos AHara C(2019)SLEDS: A DSL for Data-Centric Storage on Wireless Sensor NetworksBig Social Data and Urban Computing10.1007/978-3-030-11238-7_5(74-89)Online publication date: 23-Jan-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11238-7_5
Weisenburger PKöhler MSalvaneschi G(2018)Distributed system development with ScalaLociProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32764992:OOPSLA(1-30)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3276499
Fan XSinnen OGiacaman N(2018)Balancing parallelization and asynchronization in event‐driven programs with OpenMPConcurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience10.1002/cpe.495931:4Online publication date: 21-Sep-2018
https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.4959
Weisenburger PVisser E(2016)Multitier reactive abstractionsCompanion Proceedings of the 2016 ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity10.1145/2984043.2984051(18-20)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2984043.2984051
Long YRajan HFuentes LBatory DCzarnecki K(2016)A type-and-effect system for asynchronous, typed eventsProceedings of the 15th International Conference on Modularity10.1145/2889443.2889446(42-53)Online publication date: 14-Mar-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2889443.2889446
Ricci A(2016)Programming with event loops and control loops - From actors to agentsComputer Languages, Systems and Structures10.1016/j.cl.2015.12.00345:C(80-104)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cl.2015.12.003
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