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CSC 447: Organization of Programming Languages
Department of Computer Science
College of Physical Sciences
Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta.
WEEK 1 & 2 (Language definition structure)
PART-TIME
2022/2023 session
DR. O.E OJO

Course Outline
 Language definition structure
 Data types and structures.
 Review of basic data types, including list and trees,
 Control structure and data flow.
 Runtime consideration
 Interpretative languages,
 Lexical analyses and parsing.
 Evaluation of programming languages.
2

REASONS FOR STUDYING CONCEPTS OF
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
1. Increased ability to express ideas/algorithms
 In Natural language, the depth at which people think is influenced
by the expressive power of the language they use.
 In programming language, the complexity of the algorithms that
people implement is influenced by the set of constructs available
in the programming language.
2. Improved background for choosing appropriate Languages
 Many programmers use the language with which they are most
familiar, even though poorly suited for their new project. It is ideal
to use the most appropriate language.
3

REASONS FOR STUDYING CONCEPTS OF
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
3. Increased ability to learn new languages
 For instance, knowing the concept s of object oriented
programming OOP makes learning Java significantly easier and
also, knowing the grammar of one’s native language makes it
easier to learn another language.
4. Better Understanding of Significance of implementation
5. Better use of languages that are already known
6. The overall advancement of computing
4

APPLICATION DOMAINS
 SCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS: can be characterized as those
which predominantly manipulate numbers and arrays of numbers,
using mathematical and statistical principles as a basis for the
algorithms.
 These algorithms encompass such problem as statistical
significance test, linear programming, regression analysis and
numerical approximations for the solution of differential and
integral equations. FORTRAN, Pascal, Math lab are programming
languages that can be used here.
5

APPLICATION DOMAINS
 DATA PROCESSING APPLICATIONS: can be characterized as
those programming problems whose predominant interest is in the
creation, maintenance, extraction and summarization of data in
records and files.
 COBOL is a programming language that can be used for data
processing applications.
6

APPLICATION DOMAINS
 TEXT PROCESSING APPLICATIONS: are characterized as
those whose principal activity involves the manipulation of natural
language text, rather than numbers as their data.
 SNOBOL and C language have strong text processing
capabilities.
7

APPLICATION DOMAINS
 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE APPLICATIONS: are characterized
as those programs which are designed principally to emulate
intelligent behavior.
 They include game playing algorithms such as chess, natural
language understanding programs, computer vision, robotics and
expert systems.
 LISP has been the predominant AI programming language, and
also PROLOG using the principle of ‘’Logic programming’’
 Lately AI applications are written in Java, C++ and python.
8

APPLICATION DOMAINS
 SYSTEMS PROGRAMMING APPLICATIONS: involve developing
those programs that interface the computer system ( the
hardware) with the programmer and the operator.
 These programs include compilers, assembles, interpreters, input-
output routines, program management facilities and schedules for
utilizing and serving the various resources that comprise the
system.
 Ada, Modula – 2 and C are examples of programming languages
used here.
9

APPLICATION DOMAINS
 SYSTEMS PROGRAMMING APPLICATIONS: involve developing
those programs that interface the computer system ( the
hardware) with the programmer and the operator.
 These programs include compilers, assembles, interpreters, input-
output routines, program management facilities and schedules for
utilizing and serving the various resources that comprise the
system.
 Ada, Modula – 2 and C are examples of programming languages
used here.
10

APPLICATION DOMAINS
 WEB SOFTWARE: Web software is a collection of languages
which include:
 Markup (e.g. XHTML)
 Scripting for dynamic content under which we have the
 Client side, using scripts embedded in the XHTML documents e.g.
JavaScript, PHP
 Server side, using the common Gateway interface e.g. JSP, ASP, PHP
 General- purpose, executed on the web server through cGI e.g.
Java, C++.
11

CRITERIA FOR LANGUAGE EVALUATION AND
COMPARISION
 Expressivity : means the ability of a language to clearly reflect
the meaning intended by the algorithm designer. It encourages the
use of statement forms associated with structured programming
(usually “while “loops and “if – then – else” statements).
 Well-definiteness: that the language’s syntax and semantics are
free of ambiguity, are internally consistent and complete.
 Data types and Structures: the ability of a language to support a
variety of data values (integers, real, strings, pointers etc.) and
non-elementary collections of these.
12

COMPARISION
 Modularity: It has two aspects: the language’s support for
sub-programming and the language’s extensibility in the
sense of allowing programmer – defined operators and data
types.
 By sub programming, we mean the ability to define
independent procedures and functions (subprograms), and
communicate via parameters or global variables with the
invoking program.
 Input-Output facilities: In evaluating a language’s “Input-
Output facilities” we are looking at its support for sequential,
indexed, and random access files, as well as its support for
database and information retrieval functions.
13

COMPARISION
 Portability: A language which has “portability” is one which is
implemented on a variety of computers. That is, its design is
relatively “machine – independent”. Languages which are well-
defined tend to be more portable than others.
 Efficiency: An “efficient” language is one which permits fast
compilation and execution on the machines where it is
implemented. Traditionally, FORTRAN and COBOL have been
relatively efficient languages in their respective application areas.
14

COMPARISION
 Pedagogy: Some languages have better “pedagogy” than others.
That is, they are intrinsically easier to teach and to learn, they
have better textbooks; they are implemented in a better program
development environment, they are widely known and used by the
best programmers in an application area.
 Generality: Means that a language is useful in a wide range of
programming applications. For instance, APL has been used in
mathematical applications involving matrix algebra and in
business applications as well.
15

INFLUENCES ON LANGUAGE DESIGN
 Computer Architecture: Languages are developed around the
prevalent computer architecture, known as the Von Neumann
architecture (the most prevalent computer architecture).
 The connection speed between a computer’s memory and its
processor determines the speed of that computer.
 Program instructions often can be executed much faster than the
speed of the connection; the connection speed thus, results in a
bottleneck (Von Neumann bottleneck).
 It is the primary limiting factor in the speed of computers.
16

17
Von Neumann Architecture

 Programming Methodologies: New software development
methodologies
 (e.g. object Oriented Software Development) led to new
paradigms in programming and by extension, to new programming
languages.

18

LANGUAGE PARADIGMS
1. Imperative
 This is designed around the Von Neumann architecture. Computation is
performed through statements that change a program’s state. Central
features are variables, assignment statements and iteration, sequence
of commands, explicit state update via assignment. Examples of such
languages are FORTRAN, Algol, Pascal, e/c++, Java, Perl, JavaScript,
Visual BASIC.NET.
 2. Functional
 Here, the main means of making computations is by applying functions
to parameters. Examples are LISP, Scheme, ML, Haskell. It may also
include OO (Object Oriented) concepts.
19

LANGUAGE PARADIGMS
 3. Logic
 This is Rule-based (rules are specified in no particular order).
Computations here are made through a logical inference process.
Examples are PROLOG and CLIPS. This may also include OO
concepts.
20

TRADE-OFFS IN LANGUAGE DESIGN
 Reliability vs. Cost of Execution: For example, Java demands
that all references to array elements be checked for proper
indexing, which leads to increased execution costs.
 Readability vs. Write ability: - APL provides many powerful
operators land a large number of new symbols), allowing complex
computations to be written in a compact program but at the cost of
poor readability.
 Write ability (Flexibility) vs. reliability: The pointers in C++ for
instance are powerful and very flexible but are unreliable.
21

IMPLEMENTATION METHODS
 Compilation – Programs are translated into machine Language &
System calls.
 Interpretation – Programs are interpreted by another program (an
interpreter).
 Hybrid – Programs translated into an intermediate language for
easy interpretation.
 4. Just –in-time – Hybrid implementation, then compile sub
programs code the first time they are called.
22

COMPILATION
 Translated high level program (source language) into machine
code (machine language)
 Slow translation, fast execution
 Compilation process has several phases:
 Lexical analysis converts characters in the source program into
lexical units (e.g. identifiers, operators, keywords).
 Syntactic analysis: transforms lexical units into parse trees
which represent the syntactic structure of the program.
 Semantics analysis check for errors hard to detect during
syntactic analysis; generate intermediate code.
 Code generation – Machine code is generated.
23

INTERPRETATION
 Easier implementation of programs (run-time errors can easily and
immediately be displayed).
 ‐ Slower execution (10 to 100 times slower than compiled
programs)
 Often requires more memory space and is now rare for traditional
high level languages.
 Significant comeback with some Web scripting languages like
PHP and JavaScript.
 Interpreters act as a virtual machine for the source language
24

HYBRID IMPLEMENTAITON
 This involves a compromise between compilers and pure
interpreters.
 A high level program is translated to an intermediate language
that allows easy interpretation.
 Hybrid implementation is faster than pure interpretation. Examples
of the implementation occur in Perl and Java.
 Perl programs are partially compiled to detect errors before
interpretation.
 Initial implementations of Java were hybrid. The intermediate
form, byte code, provides portability to any machine that has a
byte code interpreter and a run time system (together, these are
called Java Virtual Machine).
25

JUST-IN-TIME IMPLEMENTATION
 This implementation initially translates program to an intermediate
language then compile the intermediate language of the
subprograms into machine code when they are called.
 Machine code version is kept for subsequent calls. Just-in-time
systems are widely used for Java programs. Also .NET languages
are implemented with a JIT system.
26

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