Prof. Farhad Mehta and OST MSE student Marc Etter presented the results of Marc Etter’s MSE Master's Thesis, TypeSearch.dev, a Type-Directed API Search Engine for Mainstream Languages, at the ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Type-Driven Development (TyDe) on September 6, 2024, in Milan, Italy. The workshop was part of the 29th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming (ICFP, https://icfp24.sigplan.org/), a top-tier conference in the field of Programming Languages.
This work introduces a novel, largely language-independent type-based search method for exploring software libraries using type signatures. The approach applies concepts from logic and type theory to address this problem in a systematic and general manner. By enhancing accessibility for various programming languages, this method has the potential to significantly broaden the adoption of specialized search tools, ultimately saving software developers time and effort.
The accompanying paper, “Towards Type-Directed API Search for Mainstream Languages,” is freely available at https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3678000.3678207. A video of the presentation can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI-X5oH0LOE. A working proof of concept is accessible at typesearch.dev.
For further inquiries, please contact Prof. Farhad Mehta.