Inferring Generic Types for Collections using LiveTyping by Hernán Wilkinson
Channel: FAST - Fundación Argentina de Smalltalk
Date: 2024-01-09

LiveTyping is a technique where the VM collects type info that is used to improve tools such as the autocomplete, the refactoring scope, etc.  LiveTyping is not able to collect a generic type for those classes that use them such as collections.

Research has been done in two different thesis to add support for generics. The first one opened the door to the second one, done by Adrian Castiglione, that uses type inference based on the type information collected by LiveTyping, providing generic type information to the tools with great success.

In this talk I'll show Adrian's work, how the inference was implemented and how the tools use that information.