Transient Typechecks are (Almost) Free


Abstract in English

Transient gradual typing imposes run-time type tests that typically cause a linear slowdown in programs performance. This performance impact discourages the use of type annotations because adding types to a program makes the program slower. A virtual machine can employ standard just-in-time optimizations to reduce the overhead of transient checks to near zero. These optimizations can give gradually-typed languages performance comparable to state-of-the-art dynamic languages, so programmers can add types to their code without affecting their programs performance.

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