Language Groups

Questions

1. Goals - what were the aims of the language designers?
2. Guiding Principles - what language design principles did they view as paramount?
3. Types - what were the language mechanisms to support types?
4. Variables - how did the language name, declare and scope variables?
5. Control Structures - what mechanisms did the language provide for controlling execution flow?
6. Procedures - what mechanisms did the language have for subroutines? How were parameters passed?
7. Most Interesting Aspects - what is unique and interesting about the language?
8. Little Mistakes - what are some mistakes in the language design? (These can be features, missing features, or ambiguous descriptions, etc.)
9. Biggest Mistake - what was single biggest mistake most detrimental to the language's success?
10. Excuse for Mistakes - were the mistakes justifiable based on what was known about languages at the time it was designed?
11. Language-dependent question:
    • for Algol68, BLISS: Burried Treasures - what features of the language seem like great ideas, but were not adopted by modern languages?
    • for C, Pascal: Reasons for Success - why did the language become so widely used?
    • for Algol60: Was it a success? (Relate to the goals you decided).

University of Virginia CS 655: Programming Languages

cs655-staff@cs.virginia.edu Last modified: Mon Feb 26 12:48:21 2001