Pluggable Controllers and Nano-Patterns

Abstract

This paper raises the idea of giving end users the ability to modify and extend the control flow constructs (if, while, etc.) of the underlying programming language, just as they can modify and extend the library standard implementation of function printf and class String. Pluggable Controllers are means for modular design of control constructors, e.g., if, while, do, switch, and operators such as short circuit conjunction (&&) and the “?.” operator of the Swift programming language. We propose a modular, pluggable controllers based, design of a language. In this design there are control constructors which are core, augmented by a standard library of control constructors, which just like all standard libraries, is extensible and replaceable. The control constructors standard library can then follow a course of evolution that is less coupled with that of the main language, where a library release does not mandate new language release. At the same time, the library could be extended by individuals, corporate and communities to implement more or less idiosyncratic Nano-Patterns. We demonstrate the imposition of pluggable control constructors on Java by employing Lola—a Turing-complete and programming language independent code preprocessor.