Language Report

You are to write a report (basically a research paper) about the programming language you have selected. The object of this assignment is to provide an overview of the features of the language as well as an evaluation of the language.

Specifications

Some possible discussion topics are listed below; you may discover others that are more appropriate to your chosen language. Read through Section 1.3 of your text for criteria to use for evaluating your language. Some of the exercises in the text might suggest other discussion topics. Use your own discretion about what you need to include. The report should provide a good overview of the subject language.

• When and why was the language written? What is unique about it? Who uses this language?
• Is there a specification? Who controls what goes into it?
• What category or categories does the language fit into? (block-structured, functional, logic, object-oriented, ...) Is it interpreted or compiled? Is it general or special purpose?
• Describe the syntax briefly. You could provide BNF rules or syntax diagrams for a few of the unique or interesting structures in the language. There is no need to provide the entire grammar.
  • What is the overall structure of a program in this language?
  • How are variables named and declared?
  • What control structures are provided?
• What primitive and compound data types does the language provide? What operations are provided for these types? What types are allowed as L-values? (That is, for which types can you do a simple assignment var = value?)
• Is there a facility for defining new types? Is inheritance supported?
• How are procedures handled by the language? What parameter passing mechanism is used? What evaluation order is used? Are there any restrictions on what can be passed to or returned from functions?
• For a special-purpose language, what facilities were added to allow the language to be used for its stated purpose?
• What advantages and disadvantages does this have over other languages? If you know of later languages that attempted to overcome some of the deficiencies, you could mention them.
• Is this a true programming language? If not, what features are missing?
• Evaluate the language in terms of the criteria discussed in Chapter 1 of your text. (readability, writability, reliability, cost, ...) This part is required.

Format

The report should be typeset in a format that is suitable for a technical report. This is not an essay and it is not a series of independent questions. Your report should provide a coherent description and evaluation of the language you are writing about. It should have an introduction and conclusion or summary. The intermediate content should be divided into sections in some logical manner. A sample document called report with an acceptable format is provided in both PDF and postscript format in the \verb"~tcole/teaching/cs354/handouts" directory on onyx.

Consider using laTex, a page layout language, to write your report. The KDE program kile provides a graphical interface that makes it relatively easy to use laTex. The source files for the sample report mentioned above are in the directory on onyx.

You will be graded on both content and presentation. (Note that the point value for this assignment is larger than for most of the programming assignments; this should give you an idea of the level of effort that is expected. If your report looks like you wrote it in a couple of hours the night before it is due, your score is likely to reflect that.)

Unless you use quoted material, whose source should be acknowledged, the text should be written in your own words.

There should be a bibliography which need not be extensive but should include any sources (including on-line sources) you discovered in the process of researching the language. There should be at least one print reference in your bibliography. (A print reference is either a book or an article that was published in a journal or magazine. Journal articles that the library has in on-line form are acceptable but articles that appear only in e-zines are not considered print references. Your text should not be the only print reference.)

Something like 5-10 pages is reasonable for the length of the report. Iit is more important that you write a coherent report that addresses the relevant topics rather than that you generate a specific number of pages.

Submission

You should turn in a hard-copy printout of your report in class on the day it is due.