tomr@ashtate (Tom Rombouts) (08/17/90)
Forgive me if this is asked often, but what are some of the most
influential works on computer language design theory? (I am familar
with the ACM 1978 Lang History that was cited, as well as a book by
Brown titled roughly "The Theory and Design of Compilers and Interpreters"
that touches on language theory.) I am also very interested in cross
language comparisions ("C did it this way, while Snobol...." etc.) that
discuss the strengths and weaknesses of various approaches.
Relating to the above, in contrast to the high-level technical issues
that are often debated in this area, are there any studies on what
type of syntactial constructs are especially easy or difficult for
beginnners to grasp? (Maybe 20 students learning BASIC compared to
20 learning C, etc.) The "right" number of commands, etc.?
Finally, relating to the recent "Universal Language" discussion,
what about various proposals to "fix" existing languages such as
BASIC, C, FORTRAN, Ada, etc? I'm sure there have been many, many
of these over the years, published and debated at length. Any that
are particularly noteworthy?
If people e-mail directly, I will actually post a summary.
(P.S. - Are comp.lang.misc and comp.software-eng arc'ed somewhere?)
Tom Rombouts Torrance Techie tomr@ashtate.A-T.com V:(213)538-7108