Chapter 1

Question 1

Why do we study programming languages?

Answer 1

• appreciation
• know which language is best for the job
• understand design choices that were made at the time of the language’s creation
• be able to read or modify someone’s code
• understand limitations of the language
• write more efficiently

Question 2

What are the programming domains?

Answer 2

• scientific computing
• business computing
• artificial intelligence
• systems programming
• web programming
• entertainment
• medical
• cloud
• agriculture

Question 3

What are the 4 language criteria and how are they related?

Answer 3

• readability: overall simplicity, orthogonality, presence of data types
• writability: simplicity, orthogonality, ability to abstract, expressivity
• reliability: performs to its spec under all operating conditions, presence of type-checking
• cost: time to learn and write, need for special hardware, cost to maintain

Question 4

What are the influences on language design?

Answer 4

• von Neumann architecture: #1 influence
• changes on emphasis over time: computer efficiency, more costly, human time and complexity, data abstractions, true object oriented languages

Question 5

What are the language design trade-offs?

Answer 5

• reliability and cost of execution conflict
• reliability and writability conflict

Question 6

What are the main implementation methods for programming languages? What are examples of each?

Answer 6

• compiled: C, C++, Pascal
• interpreted: Python, JavaScript, Bash, PHP, Prolog, Racket, Ruby
• hybrid: Java, C#, Scala

Question 7

What are the major paradigms of programming? What are examples of each?

Answer 7

• imperative: C, Python
• object oriented: Java, C#, C++, Python, Ruby
• logical, declarative: SQL, Prolog
• functional: Haskell, Lisp, Racket