Measuring with confidence: leveraging expressive type systems for correct-by-construction software

Abstract

Modern programming language type systems help programmers write correct software, and furthermore helps them write the software they actually intended to write. We show how expressive types can be used to encode dimension and units of measure information, which can be used to avoid dimensional mistakes and guide software construction, and how types can even help to generate code automatically, which eliminates a whole class of bugs.

Introductory notes for the Acta IMEKO first issue 2023, Special issue on metrology and digital transformation

“…By exploiting advances in dependent type systems, it is possible to strengthen the ability of software to reason about dimensional correctness of metrology data and bridge the gap between human-readable semantic specifications of data, and the actual code representing it in a specific programming environment. Conor McBride et al [15] show in their paper how expressive types can be used to encode dimension and units of measurement information, which can be used to avoid dimensional mistakes and guide software construction. An automatic creation of source code is considered to further help to eliminate a whole class of potential bugs in software.…”