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Watch this 15-minute conference presentation from OOPSLA 2025 that introduces a novel approach to implementing lexically scoped effect handlers that achieves zero-overhead performance. Learn how researchers from the University of Waterloo developed a type-directed compilation strategy for the Lexa language that eliminates runtime costs in scenarios where no effects are raised, addressing a key limitation of existing lexically scoped handler implementations. Discover the technical details of their stack-walking mechanism that locates appropriate handlers without requiring reified lexical identifiers, ensuring mainline code performance remains unaffected by the presence of handlers in program text. Explore the formal compilation scheme, correctness proofs, and empirical results demonstrating reduced runtime overhead in low-effect scenarios while maintaining competitive performance for effect-heavy workloads. Gain insights into how this research advances the field of structured non-local control flow mechanisms and compiler optimization techniques for modern programming languages with algebraic effects and exception handling systems.
