INTERFACE
LANGUAGE PARADIGMS
During the last 10 years, languages for programming computers have been organized into hierarchy of paradigms, the major ones being those shown in figure P.1 below.
A paradigm can be thought of as collections of abstract features that categorize a group of languages which are accepted and used by a group of practitioners. A student who understands what distinghuises each paradigm and has some programming experience with distinguishes each paradigm and has some programming experience with at least one language in each paradigm can be considered basically educated in the subject matter of programming languages. We will discuss the notion of paradigm, and provide descriptions exemplied by existing languages in the chapters that follow.
• ORGANIZATION OF THIS TEXT
A good way to bring order into the sometimes confusing collection of high level languages is to study them paradigm by paradigm.
- Most people don’t understand a language unless the actually use it.
- In order to use a language, you need an elementary language manual, which also acts a tutorial.
- Everything a student needs to achieve the first three principles should be easily and inexpensively available.
To do this, we provide :
- A textbook
- Laboratory assignments using exemplary code
- Low-cost language MiniManuals, providing tutorials in the various languages used.
The intended audience is students who can program well in at least one high level language. Knowledge of assembly language is not assumed,although hit would be helpful in understanding some topics.
In the text, we start off with some basic concepts that can be found in almost any language. Rather than consider data as bit-strings, and a program as a sequence of instructions to manipulate those bits, we look at data, program control, and procedures at a higher or more abstract level. That done, we study the paradigms, one by one.
If the language is a particularly good example of a paradigm, we have organized the student’s work around weekly programming labs using the exemplars.
The text gives equal weight to the top-level paradigms, imperative and declarative. It also emphasizes the theoretical foundations of different language types. Most programming languages have not developed simply as collections of useful computational features. Many have not developed simply as collections of usefil computatuional features. Many have tried faithfully to impelement mathematical theoris, which provide the vocabulary and structure for solving problems and about which much has been proved. We have either incorporated these notion into the text itself or included them in brief appendices on underlying mathematical theories, which provide the vocabulary and structure for solving problems and about which much has been proved. We have either incorporated these notions into the text itself or included them in brief appendices on underlying mathematical theory. Each programming language is presented as an example of one of the paradigms and, if applicable, as a model of a mathematical theory.
Any language, written or spoken, has syntax (form) and semantics (meaning).
Linguistic theory has also influenced programming languages, so we have included on the use of linguistics to write formal language definitions.
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