Scrap Your Web Application Boilerplate, or Metaprogramming with Row Types

Adam Chlipala. Scrap Your Web Application Boilerplate, or Metaprogramming with Row Types. Technical Report UCB/EECS-2006-120. 2006.

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I introduce a new functional programming language, called Laconic/Web, for rapid development of web applications. Its strong static type system guarantees that entire sequences of interaction with these applications "can't go wrong." Moreover, a higher-order dependent type system is used to enable statically-checked metaprogramming. In contrast to most dependently-typed programming languages, Laconic/Web can be used by programmers with no knowledge of proof theory. Instead, more expert developers develop libraries that extend the Laconic/Web type checker with type rewrite rules that have proofs of soundness. I compare Laconic/Web against Ruby on Rails, the most well-known representative of a popular class of Web application frameworks based around dynamic languages and runtime reflection, and show that my approach leads both to more concise programs and to better runtime efficiency.

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