Language interoperability

Last updated November 19, 2023

Language interoperability is the capability of two different programming languages to natively interact as part of the same system and operate on the same kind of data structures.^[1]

There are many ways programming languages are interoperable with one another. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript are interoperable as they are used in tandem in webpages. Some object oriented languages are interoperable thanks to their shared hosting virtual machine (e.g. .NET CLI compliant languages in the Common Language Runtime and JVM compliant languages in the Java Virtual Machine).^[2]

Methods for interoperability

Object models

Object models are standardized models which allow objects to be represented in a language-agnostic way, such that the same objects may be used across programs and across languages. CORBA and the COM are the most popular object models.

Virtual machines

A virtual machine (VM) is a specialised intermediate language that several different languages compile down to. Languages that use the same virtual machine can interoperate, as they will share a memory model and compiler and thus libraries from one language can be re-used for others on the same VM. VMs can incorporate type systems to ensure the correctness of participating languages and give languages a common ground for their type information. The use of an intermediate language during compilation or interpretation can provide more opportunities for optimisation.^[1]

Foreign function interfaces

Foreign function interfaces (FFI) allow programs written in one language to call functions written in another language. There are often considerations that preclude simply treating foreign functions as functions written in the host language, such as differences in types and execution model. Foreign function interfaces enable building wrapper libraries that provide functionality from a library from another language in the host language, often in a style that is more idiomatic for the language. Most languages have FFIs to C, which is the "lingua franca" of programming today.

Challenges

Object model differences

Object oriented languages attempt to pair containers of data with code, but how each language chooses how to do that may be slightly different. Those design decisions do not always map to other languages easily. For instance, classes using multiple inheritance from a language that permits it will not translate well to a language that does not permit multiple inheritance. A common approach to this issue is defining a subset of a language that is compatible with another language's features.^[3] This approach does mean in order for the code using features outside the subset to interoperate it will need to wrap some of its interfaces into classes that can be understood by the subset.

Memory models

Differences in how programming languages handle de-allocation of memory is another issue when trying create interoperability. Languages with automatic de-allocation will not interoperate well with those with manual de-allocation, and those with deterministic destruction will be incompatible with those with nondeterministic destruction. Based on the constraints of the language there are many different strategies for bridging the different behaviors. For example: C++ programs, which normally use manual de-allocation, could interoperate with a Java style garbage collector by changing de-allocation behavior to delete the object, but not reclaim the memory. This requires that each object will have to manually be de-allocated, in order for the garbage collector to release the memory safely.

Mutability

Mutability becomes an issue when trying to create interoperability between pure functional and procedural languages. Languages like Haskell have no mutable types, whereas C++ does not provide such rigorous guarantees. Many functional types when bridged to object oriented languages can not guarantee that the underlying objects won't be modified.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Java virtual machine</span> Virtual machine that runs Java programs

A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally describes what is required in a JVM implementation. Having a specification ensures interoperability of Java programs across different implementations so that program authors using the Java Development Kit (JDK) need not worry about idiosyncrasies of the underlying hardware platform.

In computing, serialization is the process of translating a data structure or object state into a format that can be stored or transmitted and reconstructed later. When the resulting series of bits is reread according to the serialization format, it can be used to create a semantically identical clone of the original object. For many complex objects, such as those that make extensive use of references, this process is not straightforward. Serialization of object-oriented objects does not include any of their associated methods with which they were previously linked.

Java and C++ are two prominent object-oriented programming languages. By many language popularity metrics, the two languages have dominated object-oriented and high-performance software development for much of the 21st century, and are often directly compared and contrasted. Java's syntax was based on C/C++.

In software design, the Java Native Interface (JNI) is a foreign function interface programming framework that enables Java code running in a Java virtual machine (JVM) to call and be called by native applications and libraries written in other languages such as C, C++ and assembly.

In object-oriented programming such as is often used in C++ and Object Pascal, a virtual function or virtual method is an inheritable and overridable function or method that is dispatched dynamically. Virtual functions are an important part of (runtime) polymorphism in object-oriented programming (OOP). They allow for the execution of target functions that were not precisely identified at compile time.

This article compares two programming languages: C# with Java. While the focus of this article is mainly the languages and their features, such a comparison will necessarily also consider some features of platforms and libraries. For a more detailed comparison of the platforms, see Comparison of the Java and .NET platforms.

The GLib Object System, or GObject, is a free software library providing a portable object system and transparent cross-language interoperability. GObject is designed for use both directly in C programs to provide object-oriented C-based APIs and through bindings to other languages to provide transparent cross-language interoperability, e.g. PyGObject.

Managed Extensions for C++ or Managed C++ is a now-deprecated set of language extensions for C++, including grammatical and syntactic extensions, keywords and attributes, to bring the C++ syntax and language to the .NET Framework. These extensions were created by Microsoft to allow C++ code to be targeted to the Common Language Runtime (CLR) in the form of managed code, as well as continue to interoperate with native code.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scala (programming language)</span> General-purpose programming language

Scala is a strong statically typed high-level general-purpose programming language that is supporting both object-oriented programming and functional programming. Designed to be concise, many of Scala's design decisions are aimed to address criticisms of Java.

A foreign function interface (FFI) is a mechanism by which a program written in one programming language can call routines or make use of services written or compiled in another one. An FFI is often used in contexts where calls are made into binary dynamic-link library.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Java (software platform)</span> Set of computer software and specifications

Java is a set of computer software and specifications that provides a software platform for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform computing environment. Java is used in a wide variety of computing platforms from embedded devices and mobile phones to enterprise servers and supercomputers. Java applets, which are less common than standalone Java applications, were commonly run in secure, sandboxed environments to provide many features of native applications through being embedded in HTML pages.

In software development, the programming language Java was historically considered slower than the fastest 3rd generation typed languages such as C and C++. The main reason being a different language design, where after compiling, Java programs run on a Java virtual machine (JVM) rather than directly on the computer's processor as native code, as do C and C++ programs. Performance was a matter of concern because much business software has been written in Java after the language quickly became popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Clojure is a dynamic and functional dialect of the Lisp programming language on the Java platform.

This article attempts to set out the various similarities and differences between the various programming paradigms as a summary in both graphical and tabular format with links to the separate discussions concerning these similarities and differences in extant Wikipedia articles.

Windows Runtime (WinRT) is a platform-agnostic component and application architecture first introduced in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 in 2012. It is implemented in C++ and officially supports development in C++, Rust/WinRT, Python/WinRT, JavaScript-TypeScript, and the managed code languages C# and Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET).

In computer science, bridging describes systems that map the runtime behaviour of different programming languages so they can share common resources. They are often used to allow "foreign" languages to operate a host platform's native object libraries, translating data and state across the two sides of the bridge. Bridging contrasts with "embedding" systems that allow limited interaction through a black box mechanism, where state sharing is limited or non-existent.

Kotlin is a cross-platform, statically typed, general-purpose high-level programming language with type inference. Kotlin is designed to interoperate fully with Java, and the JVM version of Kotlin's standard library depends on the Java Class Library, but type inference allows its syntax to be more concise. Kotlin mainly targets the JVM, but also compiles to JavaScript or native code via LLVM. Language development costs are borne by JetBrains, while the Kotlin Foundation protects the Kotlin trademark.

References

1 2 Malone, Todd (2014). "Interoperability in Programming Languages". CiteSeerX 10.1.1.684.337 .{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
↑ "Cross-Language Interoperability". Microsoft Developer Network (msdn.microsoft.com).
↑ Chisnall, David (2013-10-01). "The Challenge of Cross-language Interoperability". Queue. 11 (10): 20–28. doi: 10.1145/2542661.2543971 . ISSN 1542-7730.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[:0-1] 1 2 Malone, Todd (2014). "Interoperability in Programming Languages". CiteSeerX 10.1.1.684.337 .{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

[ms-2] "Cross-Language Interoperability". Microsoft Developer Network (msdn.microsoft.com).

[3] Chisnall, David (2013-10-01). "The Challenge of Cross-language Interoperability". Queue. 11 (10): 20–28. doi: 10.1145/2542661.2543971 . ISSN 1542-7730.

[1]

[2]

[3]