Classification of programming languages

(Boston), 1993.
Other Sources:
Paul Hudak, “Conception, Evolution, and Application of Functional

© O. Nierstrasz

PS — Introduction

1.

“user interface” to a computer?
Syntax + semantics?
Compiler, or interpreter, or

A programming language is a notational system for describing computation in a machine-readable and human-readable form.
— Louden

languages (FORTRAN, Pascal, C ...)
4GL: domain specific application generators
5GL: AI languages

© O. Nierstrasz

PS — Introduction

1.

variables; expressions; statements; keywords; control constructs; procedures; comments; errors ...
Uncommon

different back-ends.

— paper proposal
FP
John Backus (1978) — Turing award lecture
ML
Edinburgh
initially designed

in Oslo as a language for simulation programming, by adding

Begin
while 1 = 1 do begin
outtext ("Hello World!");
outimage;
end;
End;

Transcript show:'Hello World';cr

behaviour and interfaces
Successes
Smalltalk project pioneered OO user interfaces
Large commercial impact

through mid 1970s).

BASIC
Developed at Dartmouth College in mid 1960s
Minimal; easy

10 print "Hello World!"
20 goto 10

numerical algorithms
Large, non-standard alphabet (52 characters in addition to alphanumerics)
Primitive

© O. Nierstrasz

PS — Introduction

1.

'HELLO WORLD'

more than other PLs
String operations: pattern-matching and substitution
Arrays and associative

© O. Nierstrasz

PS — Introduction

1.

OUTPUT = 'Hello World!'
END

as lists
Small set of constructor/selector operations to create and manipulate

(DEFUN HELLO-WORLD ()
(PRINT (LIST 'HELLO 'WORLD)))

immature
Modeling languages
emerging from UML and MDE …

compilers and interpreters differ?
Why was FORTRAN developed?
What were the main

languages?
Why are FORTRAN and COBOL still important programming languages?
Which language