This outline is also available in PDF.
Held: Monday, 24 January 2011
Summary:
Today we begin the class by considering the key issues we will discuss
this semester.
Related Pages:
Notes:
- For Thursday (or, perferably, before), do the introductory survey.
- Reading for Wednesday (respond Tuesday evening): Tate, 2.1-2.2.
- Microsoft is giving Thursday's Thursday extra. (Not in CS; Held in CDO.)
Overview:
- What is a programming language?
- Why study programming languages?
- How shoudl we study programming languages?
- I believe in beginning my courses with a discussion of the topic of
study. In particular, what are we studying,
why do we study that topic, and
how do we study that topic.
- The following are my notes on the topic. I'd prefer if you waited
to read them until we've had some discussion.
- Those of you who've been in my classes before probably have a
good sense of how to balance reading and discussing.
- Surprisingly, different people (even different programming language
theorists) seem to have different definitions of ``programming
language''.
- What is your definition?
- Here are some garnered from notes and books. Are they all
the same? What accounts for the differences?
- Hoare (in part): A tool to aid the programmer.
- Louden: A notational system for describing computation
in machine-readable and human-readable form.
- Matsumoto: [T]he means of porgramming but also
enhancers for you mind that shape the way you think about programming.
- Reade: One, rather narrow, view is that a program is a
sequence of instructions for a machine. We hope to show that there is
much to be gained from taking the much broader view that programs
are descriptions of values, properties, methods, problems, and
solutions. The role of the machine is to speed up the manipulation
of these descriptions to provide solutions to particular problems.
A programming language is a convention for writing descriptions
which can be evaluated.
- Rebelsky: A notation for expressing algorithms so that they
may be understood by humans and processed by machines.
- Stansifer: The purpose of language is communication. Human
beings use natural languages to communicate among themselves.
Programming languages are used to communicate with literal-minded
machines.
- Webopedia:
A vocabulary and set of grammatical rules for instructing a computer
to perform specific tasks. The term programming language usually
refers to high-level languages, such as BASIC, C, C++, COBOL, FORTRAN,
Ada, and Pascal. Each language has a unique set of keywords (words
that it understands) and a special syntax for organizing program
instructions.
- Wikipedia: A programming language is an artificial language
designed to express computations that can be performed by a machine,
particularly a computer.
- Different languages provide significantly different perspectives on
how to express algorithms, data structures, and control. They may also
provide different features for developing algorithms. By visiting
these different perspectives, you will find new ways to express your
ideas (and perhaps even find ways to express ideas that were previously
too difficult to express).
- Most of us will need to write programs in the future. Exposure to
a wider variety of paradigms, principles, and languages
- gives you tools and methodologies for choosing which language to
use for a project;
- increases your ability to learn new languages;
- often improves your programming ability in your language of choice.
- Most major software packages end up including some form of programming
language. By studying languages, you will be better able to design your
own languages.
- The Tcl crowd would tell you that everyone should just include
Tcl in their package.
- The FSF crowd might tell you that Scheme would be even better.
- These days, the Ruby and Python crowds might also argue for their
languages, although both are a bit bigger than Tcl or Scheme.
- There are many different perspectives on how best to study
programming languages. At times, it seems every course (or at
least every text) promotes a different perspective.
- Each perspective has certain advantages and disadvantages.
- Some perspectives are language-based.
- One might cover a new language every week. This provides a
wide introduction to languages and gives some basis for comparison.
At the same time, it makes it difficult to cover languages and
issues in any depth. (Tate claims that it is possible to focus on
deep issues, and we're going to try.)
- One might cover a new language ever month. This permits greater
understanding of the particular languages covered, but often at
the expense of higher-level understanding.
- One might cover one language that is so complex and multifacted
that it introduces a wide variety of topics.
- Some perspectives are implementation-based.
- One might develop interpreters for a number of languages. This
enhances understanding of many design issues and their advantages
and disadvantages. At the same time, implementation is difficult
and can detract from learning of more general issues.
- One might develop an interpreter or compiler for a single language
that expresses concepts from multiple paradigms. Again, this
helps illustrate a number of key concepts and allows you to
experiment with variations on a theme, but has the potential
to miss many important issues.
- Some perspectives are semantics-based.
- One might investigate a single form of semantic notation and develop
semantics for a number of languages (or for one large language).
- One might investigate a number of forms of semantic notation and
develop semantics for a small language.
- Some perspectives are concept-based.
- One might study the various paradigms and design possibilities.
This is the most general strategy, but runs the risk of ignoring
more concrete details.
- We will use a variety of strategies. For the first half of the semester,
we will look at issues in the context of learning a variety of languages.
During that time, we will also try to pick out higher-level issues. In
the second half of the semester, we will consider a variety of other language
issues, including some you choose yourself.
- In the second half of the semester, we will ground our work on readings
from the primary literature.
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