Can Advanced Type Systems Be Usable? An Empirical Study of Ownership, Assets, and Typestate in Obsidian
Tue 17 Nov 2020 05:00 - 05:20 at SPLASH-I - M-6 Chair(s): Ifaz Kabir, David Grove
Some blockchain programs (smart contracts) have included serious security vulnerabilities. Obsidian is a new typestate-oriented programming language that uses a strong type system to rule out some of these vulnerabilities. Although Obsidian was designed to promote usability to make it as easy as possible to write programs, strong type systems can cause a language to be difficult to use. In particular, ownership, typestate, and assets, which Obsidian uses to provide safety guarantees, have not seen broad adoption together in popular languages and result in significant usability challenges. We performed an empirical study with 20 participants comparing Obsidian to Solidity, which is the language most commonly used for writing smart contracts today. We observed that Obsidian participants were able to successfully complete more of the programming tasks than the Solidity participants. We also found that the Solidity participants commonly inserted asset-related bugs, which Obsidian detects at compile time.
Mon 16 Nov Times are displayed in time zone: Central Time (US & Canada) change
17:00 - 18:20: M-6OOPSLA at SPLASH-I +12h Chair(s): Patrick LamUniversity of Waterloo, Konstantinos MamourasRice University | |||
17:00 - 17:20 Talk | Can Advanced Type Systems Be Usable? An Empirical Study of Ownership, Assets, and Typestate in Obsidian OOPSLA Michael CoblenzUniversity of Maryland at College Park, Jonathan AldrichCarnegie Mellon University, Brad A. MyersCarnegie Mellon University, Joshua SunshineCarnegie Mellon University Link to publication DOI Media Attached | ||
17:20 - 17:40 Talk | Scalable and Serializable Networked Multi-actor Programming OOPSLA Bo SangPurdue University / Ant Group, Patrick EugsterUSI Lugano / TU Darmstadt / Purdue University, Gustavo PetriARM Research, Srivatsan RaviUniversity of Southern California, Pierre-Louis RomanUSI Lugano Link to publication DOI Media Attached | ||
17:40 - 18:00 Talk | Designing Types for R, Empirically OOPSLA Alexi TurcotteNortheastern University, Aviral GoelNortheastern University, Filip KřikavaCzech Technical University, Jan VitekNortheastern University / Czech Technical University Link to publication DOI Media Attached | ||
18:00 - 18:20 Talk | Geometry Types for Graphics Programming OOPSLA Dietrich GeislerCornell University, Irene YoonUniversity of Pennsylvania, Aditi KabraCarnegie Mellon University, Horace HeCornell University, Yinnon SandersCornell University, Adrian SampsonCornell University Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached |
Tue 17 Nov Times are displayed in time zone: Central Time (US & Canada) change
05:00 - 06:20: M-6OOPSLA at SPLASH-I Chair(s): Ifaz KabirUniversity of Alberta, David GroveIBM Research | |||
05:00 - 05:20 Talk | Can Advanced Type Systems Be Usable? An Empirical Study of Ownership, Assets, and Typestate in Obsidian OOPSLA Michael CoblenzUniversity of Maryland at College Park, Jonathan AldrichCarnegie Mellon University, Brad A. MyersCarnegie Mellon University, Joshua SunshineCarnegie Mellon University Link to publication DOI Media Attached | ||
05:20 - 05:40 Talk | Scalable and Serializable Networked Multi-actor Programming OOPSLA Bo SangPurdue University / Ant Group, Patrick EugsterUSI Lugano / TU Darmstadt / Purdue University, Gustavo PetriARM Research, Srivatsan RaviUniversity of Southern California, Pierre-Louis RomanUSI Lugano Link to publication DOI Media Attached | ||
05:40 - 06:00 Talk | Designing Types for R, Empirically OOPSLA Alexi TurcotteNortheastern University, Aviral GoelNortheastern University, Filip KřikavaCzech Technical University, Jan VitekNortheastern University / Czech Technical University Link to publication DOI Media Attached | ||
06:00 - 06:20 Talk | Geometry Types for Graphics Programming OOPSLA Dietrich GeislerCornell University, Irene YoonUniversity of Pennsylvania, Aditi KabraCarnegie Mellon University, Horace HeCornell University, Yinnon SandersCornell University, Adrian SampsonCornell University Link to publication DOI Pre-print Media Attached |