The Anatomy of Programming Languages

Authors

Alice E. Fischer, University of New HavenFollow
Frances S. Grodzinsky, Sacred Heart University

Files

Author URLs

Professor Fischer's faculty profile

Description

The specific goals of this book are to help students learn: *To reason clearly about programming languages. *To develop principles of communication so that we can evaluate the wisdom and utility of the decisions made in the process of language design. *To break down language into its major components, and each component in to small pieces so that we can focus on competing alternatives. *To define a consistent and general set of terms for the components out of which programming languages are built, and the concepts on which they are based. * To use these terms to describe existing languages, and in so doing clarify the conflicting terminology used by the language designers, and untangle the complexities inherent in so many languages. *To see below the surface appearance of a language to its actual structure and descriptive power. *To understand that many language features that commonly occur together are, in fact, independent and separable. *To appreciate the advantages and disadvantages of each feature. *To suggest ways in which these basic building blocks can be recombined in new languages with more desirable properties and fewer faults. *To see the similarities and differences that exist among languages students already know, and to learn new ones. To use the understanding so gained to suggest future trends in language design.

ISBN

9780130351555

Publication Date

1993

Publisher

Prentice Hall

City

Englewood Cliffs, N.J.

Keywords

Programming languages, programming

Subject: LCSH

Programming languages (Electronic computers)

Disciplines

Computer Engineering | Electrical and Computer Engineering

Comments

Copyright now owned by Alice Fischer. Posted by her permission. Download version updated 2014. Posted also at Professor Fischer's course site.

Repository Citation

Fischer, Alice E. and Grodzinsky, Frances S., "The Anatomy of Programming Languages" (1993). Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Book Series. 1.
https://digitalcommons.newhaven.edu/electricalcomputerengineering-books/1

Publisher Citation

Fischer, Alice E., Grodzinsky, Frances S. The Anatomy of Programming Languages. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993. 2014 update (C) Alice Fischer.