Benefits of type inference for an object-oriented real-time language

Abstract

Real Time Talk is a framework and an object-oriented language for distributed hard real-time systems. This paper presents past, present, and future work in the Real Time Talk project. It concentrates on the language and programming part of Real Time Talk, and the problems a dynamically typed language impose on a real-time system.We look at how some of these problems can be solved by type inference and how type information can assist the compiler in accepting larger classes of real-time programs, generate more efficient and deterministic code, provide better estimation of execution times, and avoid run-time type errors. With type inference, one can have the best of two worlds --- efficiency and type safety, without the need for manual type declarations. An example is used to illustrate these ideas.