ALL 16 CHAPTERS COVERED
,Chapter 1 :: Introduction
,Introduction
• Why are there so many programming
languages?
– evolution -- we've learned better ways of doing
things over time
– socio-economic factors: proprietary interests,
commercial advantage
– orientation toward special purposes
– orientation toward special hardware
– diverse ideas about what is pleasant to use
, Introduction
• What makes a language successful?
– easy to learn (BASIC, Pascal, LOGO, Scheme)
– easy to express things, easy use once fluent, "powerful”
(C, Common Lisp, APL, Algol-68, Perl)
– easy to implement (BASIC, Forth)
– possible to compile to very good (fast/small) code
(Fortran)
– backing of a powerful sponsor (COBOL, PL/1, Ada,
Visual Basic)
– wide dissemination at minimal cost (Pascal, Turing,
Java)
,Chapter 1 :: Introduction
,Introduction
• Why are there so many programming
languages?
– evolution -- we've learned better ways of doing
things over time
– socio-economic factors: proprietary interests,
commercial advantage
– orientation toward special purposes
– orientation toward special hardware
– diverse ideas about what is pleasant to use
, Introduction
• What makes a language successful?
– easy to learn (BASIC, Pascal, LOGO, Scheme)
– easy to express things, easy use once fluent, "powerful”
(C, Common Lisp, APL, Algol-68, Perl)
– easy to implement (BASIC, Forth)
– possible to compile to very good (fast/small) code
(Fortran)
– backing of a powerful sponsor (COBOL, PL/1, Ada,
Visual Basic)
– wide dissemination at minimal cost (Pascal, Turing,
Java)
