Behavioral Up/Down Casting for Statically Typed Languages

Explore a conference talk on behavioral up/down casting for statically typed languages presented at ACM SIGPLAN. Delve into the development of JaTyC, a typestate-based checking approach for Java that aims to find bugs in object-oriented code. Learn about the challenges of associating behavioral types with object-oriented languages and how JaTyC addresses them. Discover the limitations of existing approaches like Mungo in supporting inheritance and polymorphism. Examine the initial solution that utilized simulation-based subtyping and its constraints. Understand the importance of overcoming these limitations for real-world applicability. Gain insights into the language-agnostic casting theory developed and mechanized by the presenters, proving its soundness. See how JaTyC has been extended to support casting in the middle of a class protocol, enhancing its expressiveness and practical utility.