Gilad Bracha (

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

: גלעד ברכה) is a

software engineer Software engineering is a branch of both computer science and engineering focused on designing, developing, testing, and maintaining software applications. It involves applying engineering principles and computer programming expertise to develop ...

at F5, and formerly at

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, where he was on the Dart programming language team. He is creator of the

Newspeak In the dystopian novel '' Nineteen Eighty-Four'' (also published as ''1984''), by George Orwell, Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate. To meet the ideological requirements of Ingsoc (English Socialism) in O ...

language, and co-author of the second and third editions of the

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

Language Specification, and a major contributor to the second edition of the

Java Virtual Machine 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 descr ...

Specification. Between 1994 and 1997, he worked on the

Smalltalk Smalltalk is a purely object oriented programming language (OOP) that was originally created in the 1970s for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, but later found use in business. It was created at Xerox PARC by Learni ...

system developed by Animorphic Systems, a company that was bought by Sun in 1997. From 1997 to 2006, he worked at

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

as computational theologist and, as of 2005, distinguished engineer, on various aspects of the specification and implementation of Java.Gilad Bracha’s CV
/ref> Following that, he was distinguished engineer at

Cadence Design Systems Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (stylized as cādence)Investor's Business DailCEO Lip-Bu Tan Molds Troubled Cadence Into Long-Term LeaderRetrieved November 12, 2020 is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology and computational ...

from 2006 to 2009, where he led a team of developers designing and implementing

. Bracha received his B.Sc. in

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

from Ben Gurion University in

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

and his Ph.D. in computer science from the

University of Utah The University of Utah (the U, U of U, or simply Utah) is a public university, public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret (Book of Mormon), Deseret by the General A ...

. Bracha won the Senior Dahl–Nygaard Prize in 2017.

BGGA closures

In 2006, Bracha, with Neal Gafter,

James Gosling James Arthur Gosling (born 19 May 1955) is a Canadian computer scientist, best known as the founder and lead designer behind the Java (programming language), Java programming language. Gosling was elected a member of the National Academy of E ...

, and Peter von der Ahé (collectively BGGA), drafted a specification for adding closures to the Java language, version 6. The proposal has been criticized by Joshua Bloch on terms of being needlessly complex (adding function types and non-local returns) while providing little benefit for the average Java programmer over other simpler proposals. Closures were added to

Java 8 The Java language has undergone several changes since JDK 1.0 as well as numerous additions of classes and packages to the standard library. Since J2SE 1.4, the evolution of the Java language has been governed by the Java Community P ...

, but based on a different proposal than the BGGA one.

Pluggable type systems

Bracha proposes that choice of

type system In computer programming, a type system is a logical system comprising a set of rules that assigns a property called a ''type'' (for example, integer, floating point, string) to every '' term'' (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Usu ...

be made independent of choice of language; that these type systems should be co-existing modules that " plug" into said language as needed. He believes this is advantageous, because what he calls mandatory type systems make languages less expressive and code more fragile. The requirement that types do not affect the semantics of the language is challenging to fulfill; for example, constructs like type-based overloading are disallowed. Pluggable type systems are similar to other categories of type systems, such as optional typing, type hinting, type annotations, and gradual type checking. The difference lies in allowing for multiple type systems to co-exist in the same codebase. Examples of these similar type approaches include Smalltalk, Python 3,

Ruby Ruby is a pinkish-red-to-blood-red-colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sapph ...

, Clojure, and PHP 5. For most of the languages there is only one implementation of the type system. The exception is Python 3 where the type system is truly pluggable, because there are several implementations and the programmer can use the one that is the best fit. The only language designed with a pluggable type system from the start is Newspeak. Java 8 provides the ability to extend the type system, but does not allow flexibility in the basics of the type system, such as choosing between static and dynamic typing.

References

External links

*
Bracha’s blog

Bracha’s old blog at Sun
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bracha, Gilad Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American computer programmers American software engineers Sun Microsystems people Ben-Gurion University of the Negev alumni University of Utah alumni Dahl–Nygaard Prize