Treffer: BabyJ: From Object Based to Class Based Programming via Types

The popularity of object based languages has risen dramatically in recent years, owing to their use as scripts in HTML pages, or for interfacing with databases. A characteristic of these languages is interpretation and weak typing. Weak typing allows rapid prototyping but also runtime type errors. Therefore, it is desirable at a later development stage to have some assurances that your program will not go wrong. Class based programming languages usually have static typing and thus give more robust programs. However, owing to the rigidity of the type system prototyping can be di#cult. We propose a language, BabyJ, that combines the benefits of object based programming and types. BabyJ allows rapid "typeless" development and also gives the programmer the opportunity to incrementally annotate the program with type information. Once fully typed, a BabyJ program can be converted to an equivalent Java program, that can be developed further. This work is a continuation of previous work on BabyJ, in particular we have substantially improved the translation from BabyJ to Java, so that the code produced is in a class based style. Therefore, further development of the translated program is easier. 1