University of Virginia, Department of Computer Science
CS655: Programming Languages
Spring 2000
From evans@virginia.edu Fri Feb 4 12:32 EST 2000
Date: Fri, 4 Feb 2000 12:32:34 -0500 (EST)
From: David Evans
To: cs655-students@cs.virginia.edu
Subject: Paper choices reminder
Reply-to: evans@virginia.edu
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 2537
Remember to send a message to cs655-staff with your paper choices (as
described on the 3 Feb Manifest) by 8pm Sunday.
In class on Tuesday, we will divide into groups by language to fill in
the study table. I'll send out a message Monday morning telling you
which language you are assigned to, and you should come to class Tuesday
with the table column for that language filled out (some of the rows are
slightly changes from the 1 Feb Manifest):
1. Goals - what were the aims of the language designers?
2. Guiding Principles - what language design principles did they view as
paramount?
3. Types - what were the language mechanisms to support types?
4. Variables - how did the language name, declare and scope variables?
5. Control Structures - what mechanisms did the language provide for
controlling execution flow?
6. Procedures - what mechanisms did the language have for subroutines?
How were parameters passed?
7. Most Interesting Aspects - what is unique and interesting about the
language?
8. Little Mistakes - what are some mistakes in the language design? (These
can be features, missing features, or ambiguous descriptions,
etc.)
9. Biggest Mistake - what was single biggest mistake most detrimental
to the language's success?
10. Excuse for Mistakes - were the mistakes justifiable based on what
was known about languages at the time it was designed?
11. Language-dependent question:
for Algol68, BLISS:
Burried Treasures - what features of the language seem like
great ideas, but were not adopted by modern languages?
for C, Pascal:
Reasons for Success - why did the language become so widely
used?
for Algol60:
Was it a success? (Relate to the goals you decided).
You should come to class with prepared, written answers for questions
1-6, and ideas for 7-11, so groups can reach a consensus on the
objective (1-6) questions quickly, and spend most of the time discussing
the subjective ones.
Note: The fact that you will be assigned to a group discussing a single
language, doesn't mean you should wait until Monday and only read the
paper(s) relevant to that language. To do position paper 2 and the
final exam, you will need to know several of these languages well.
Students who don't send me a paper choice message by Sunday, will not be
assigned to groups, and will have to come up with answers for all the
languages independently. If you have particular expertise in one of
these languages, you may mention it in your message and we will take it
into consideration.
Best,
--- Dave
