1 Programming Languages Prelim

programming language

_______ is a formal notation system or instructions for writing computer programs and other software applications

Machine language

Ada Lovelace invented the first machine algorithm.

She made the leap that numbers could represent other things, leading to the idea of programming languages.

• Her work was the first step in designing a language capable of giving computer instructions.

Plankalkül

Konrad Zuse, a German scientist, developed a language for expressing computations for the Z4, a computer from electromechanical relays.

• ______ means program calculus.

• It was the first high-level computer programming language ever developed.

• This language included mathematical expressions, showing the current relationships between program variables and the ability to store codes that enabled engineers to carry out routine, repetitive tasks more efficiently and quickly.

Assembly Language

Kathleen Booth wrote the first assembly language, a low-level programming language developed to simplify machine code for writing instructions for processors.

Shortcode

Implemented by William Schmitt to improve the operations of the BINAC and UNIVAC computers

Autocode

Alick Glennie coined “____" to refer to a set of programming languages.

It was developed for the Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester.

• It was considered the first compiled programming language that could be translated into machine code using a special application known as the compiler

Fortran/Formula Translation

This was created by John Backus to shorten the process of programming and make computer programming more accessible.

• It is still used today in supercomputers and scientific and mathematical computations.

ALGOL / Algorithmic Language

This was created by American and European computer scientists.

• It became the point of origin for other programming languages, including Pascal, Java, C, and C++.

LISP/ List Processor

John McCarthy created the _______ for his artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

• It is one of the oldest computer programming languages still used today by AI companies like Boeing and Genworks.

COBOL / Common Business Oriented Language.

It was developed and designed by Dr. Grace Murray Hopper for business computer programs in industries.

• It was estimated to be in use by over 100 million people and is still widely used in today’s banking systems.

BASIC

Created as a computer programming language for beginners by Dartmouth College students.

______ stands for Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

• Bill Gates and Paul Allen furthered its development, and it became Microsoft’s first commercially successful product

Pascal

Developed by Niklaus Wirth, it was named after the famed mathematician Blaise Pascal.

• Apple was one of the leading companies to endorse this due to its streamlined and straightforward process

C

Dennis Ritchie developed this language at the Bell Telephone Laboratories.

It was named as such as it descended from the B language.

It is recommended for creating embedded system drivers and applications.

Programming languages like C#, Java, JavaScript, Perl, PHP, and Python are all derived from this Programming Language

SQL/Structured Query Language

_____ was developed by Raymond Boyce and Donald Chamberlain.

• It was first called SEQUEL and was used for modifying, viewing, and altering information in databases.

C++

Bjarne Stroustrup, a C programmer, modified the programming language and released it as ______.

• The changes include new features such as templates, classes, and virtual functions.

Objective-C

Brad Cox and Tom Love created _______, which is the primary programming language used to create applications for Apple’s iOS, macOS, and iPad operating systems.

Python

Guido Van Rossum founded this as a support language for software developers, build control and management, testing, and many other ways.

• It is a general-purpose, high-level language.

Visual Basic (VB)

Created by Microsoft.

• It allows users to drag and drop sections of code simultaneously.

• Users can choose from various options in the drop-down menus and change different codes

Java

Created by James Gosling for a software project for interactive TV.

• It is considered one of the world’s most famous and popular programming languages for coding web applications.

• It is a multiplatform, object-oriented, and network-centric language that can be used as a platform.

JavaScript

Created by Brendan Eich and is primarily used as a scripting language in websites.

• It is also used for web development, PDF documents, and desktop widgets.

PHP

Rasmus Lerdorf developed ______ (previously known as Personal Home Page, now known as Hypertext Preprocessor) to build and maintain web pages and server-side development.

• Facebook, Wikipedia, and WordPress use this.

Scientific Applications

The first digital computers from the late 1940s to early 1950s were invented and used for this domain.

At the time, simple data structures such as arrays and matrices and control structures such as counting loops and selection were used, but this required several floatingpoint arithmetic computations.

Business Applications

Computer use in this domain began in the 1950s when special computers were developed along with special languages.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

This domain is characterized by the use of symbolic rather than numeric computations.

In symbolic computation, symbols consisting of names rather than numbers are manipulated and are more conveniently done with linked lists of data rather than arrays

Web Software

The WWW (World Wide Web) is supported by a collection of languages, ranging from HTML (not a programming language) to Java (general-purpose programming

language).

• The need for dynamic Web content demands some computation capability, which can be provided by embedding programming code in an HTML document

• Embedding programming code can be in the form of a scripting language such as JavaScript or PHP.

Programming Environments

It is the collection of tools in software development.

• It may consist of only a file system, a text editor, a linker, and a compiler, or sometimes, it may include a large collection of integrated tools wherein each is accessed through a uniform user interface.

Microsoft Visual Studio Code

It is a redefined and optimized code editor for building and debugging modern web and cloud applications

• It is a lightweight yet powerful source code editor that runs on a desktop and is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux

NetBeans

It is a free, open-source, integrated development environment (IDE) that allows the development of desktop, mobile, and web applications.

• It provides comprehensive support for JDK 7 technologies and the most recent Java enhancements

Arduino IDE

It contains a text editor for coding, a message area, a text console, a toolbar for various functions, and a series of menus.

• It connects to the Arduino board to upload programs and communicate with them.

Blockly

It is a visual programming editor that uses drag-and-drop blocks for coding

Evaluation criteria

This help analyze the impact of programming languages on the software development process, including maintenance

Readability

An important criterion for assessing a programming language is the ease with which programs can be read and understood.

Simplicity

The overall _______ of a programming language strongly impacts its readability.

• For example, a larger number of basic constructs in a language is more difficult to learn than one with a smaller number

Feature Multiplicity

a scenario of more than one (1) way to accomplish a particular operation

Operator Overloading

a scenario wherein a single operator symbol has more than one (1) meaning.

• It can result in reduced readability if users create their overloading and do not do it sensibly.

Oversimplicity

a scenario wherein the language is too simple to the point of lacking more complex statements and less obvious program structure

Orthogonality

_____ is the ability to change one thing without unseen effects on other things in the program

Data Types

The presence of adequate facilities for defining data types and data structure offers a significant aid to readability.

Syntax Design

The syntax or form of the elements has an impact on the readability of programs.

Special Words

Some programming languages have used matching pairs of special words or symbols to form groups.

• These languages have diminished readability as statement groups are always terminated in the same way, making it difficult to determine which group is being ended when an end or a right brace appears ( } ).

Form and Meaning

Designing statements to make their appearance partially specify their purpose, which helps readability.

• Semantics, or meaning, must follow directly from syntax or form

Writability

It is the measure of how easily a language can be used to create programs for a chosen problem domain.

Simplicity and Orthogonality

A large number of different constructs in a language might confuse some programmers as they might not be familiar with them.

This leads to the misuse and disuse of some features

Expressivity

______ in a language refers to various characteristics.

• It means that there are more effective operators that allow a computation to be accomplished with a very small program.

• For instance, in C language, the notation count++ is more convenient and shorter than count = count + 1.

Reliability

It is met if a program performs to its specifications under all conditions

Type Checking

This tests for the type of errors in a program, either by the compiler or during program execution.

Exception Handling

is the ability of the program to intercept runtime errors and other unusual conditions detectable by the program, take corrective measures, and then continue.

Aliasing

Happens when there are two (2) or more distinct names in a program that can be used to access the same memory cell.

• It is considered and accepted as a dangerous feature in a programming language.

Readability and Writability

A language that does not support natural ways to express the required algorithms in a program will use unnatural approaches that are likely to be incorrect for all possible situations.