5 Programming languages and systems

Abstract

This chapter explains the way advancements in programming languages and operating systems have combined to create an environment that is easy for a programmer to work in. By easy it means that the programmer can communicate with the computer in a language that is easy to understand, as well as far removed from the details of the machine. This decreases the number of errors that occur because of human mistakes. The system is also made more efficient by performing certain tasks on behalf of the programmer or user, as well as distributing the resources in such a manner that they are used as often as possible. In programming, these goals are achieved by providing the programmer with a more abstract language with which to communicate instructions to the computer. Also, through semantic analyses, compilers can be developed that perform optimizations to yield more efficient machine code. In operating systems, many efforts have gone into creating a machine that is efficient and convenient to use. These efforts include creating operating systems that manage resources, employ virtual memory systems, and use parallelism and multi-processors. Advances in programming languages, architectures, and operating systems have combined to make computer programming a reliable and profitable pursuit. Further improvements continue to be made especially in finding efficient ways of implementing languages with greater expressive power and in developing reasonable organizations of distributed systems.