Programming by sketching for bit-streaming programs

This paper introduces the concept of programming with sketches, an approach for the rapid development of high-performance applications. This approach allows a programmer to write clean and portable reference code, and then obtain a high-quality implementation by simply sketching the outlines of the desired implementation. Subsequently, a compiler automatically fills in the missing details while also ensuring that a completed sketch is faithful to the input reference code. In this paper, we develop StreamBit as a sketching methodology for the important class of bit-streaming programs (e.g., coding and cryptography). A sketch is a partial specification of the implementation, and as such, it affords several benefits to programmer in terms of productivity and code robustness. First, a sketch is easier to write compared to a complete implementation. Second, sketching allows the programmer to focus on exploiting algorithmic properties rather than on orchestrating low-level details. Third...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: PLDI
• Authors: Armando Solar-Lezama, Rodric M. Rabbah, Rastislav Bodík, Kemal Ebcioglu
• Keywords: PLDI 2005, Programmers, Programming Languages, Reference Code