History Of Programming Languages Research Articles

Abstract Machine of the Programming Language for Educational Purposes SYNCHRO

The article is devoted to a number of solutions for organizing work with memory in educational languages and programming systems aimed at teaching the preparation of multi-threaded programs over shared memory. The consideration was carried out within the framework of the SYNCHRO programming language for educational purposes, which made it possible to analyze variants of such solutions without the limitations typical for traditional manufacturing tools and devices of standard programming systems. The article gives a clear formulation of an abstract machine and a diagram of a command system that allows you to define the behavior of a program as a distributed system from a number of threads interacting in terms of access to the values of variables located in shared memory. The de-vice of shared memory and mechanisms of access to it by individual processes, which are a sequence of command execution, some of which are requests to shared memory, are described. The focus is on the convenience of debugging small programs used to introduce concurrency problems in the learning process, where the pace of learners’ under-standing of the problems is more important than achieving program efficiency and performance. The solution to this problem is useful when studying programming methods, as well as studying the history of programming languages, comparing programming paradigms, the potential of the schemes and models used, assessing the level of novelty of the programming languages being created, creating a technique for measuring different characteristics of programs on models and choosing criteria for the practicality of the created programs. When choosing a system of commands for an abstract machine, the principles of functional programming were taken into account as a popular paradigm at the stage of preparing prototypes and models of multi-threaded programs. From these principles, the conclusion is drawn of the consequences that allow you to successfully select elementary instructions that support working with memory in the style of data immutability and their transactional processing. For educational tasks in programming, the ability to ensure the correctness and completeness of solutions is more important than the efficiency and productivity of the received programs. This is the path to building reliable and secure software.

Visualization of the Results of the Analysis of Programming Languages for Their Superficial Comparison

The article is devoted to the choice of a clear and concise form for presenting the results of analise and comparing programming languages and systems, convenient for assessing the expressive power of languages and the complexity of implementing systems. The formalization is adapted to the paradigm analysis of the definitions of programming languages and the selection of practical criteria for decomposition of programs. The semantic decomposition of the definitions of languages and systems as part of the analysis of programming paradigms was chosen as the main ap-proach. Such a choice makes it possible to single out autonomously developed typical program components that can be adapted to the design of various information systems. Many works on methods for developing software systems depend on the practicality of approaches to decomposition of programs debugged using programming systems. The solution to this problem is useful when studying programming methods, studying the history of programming languages, for comparing programming paradigms, the potential of used circuits and models, assessing the novelty level of created programming languages, and also when choosing criteria for program decomposition. In addition, their existence allows us to form a teaching methodology for developing the components of information systems. Along the way, the distance in conceptual complexity between programming and programming system development is shown.

Towards a hermeneutic definition of software

The paper intends to establish a comprehensive definition of software from a postphenomenological and hermeneutic point of view. It intends to show the contribution of continental philosophy to the study of new technologies. In section “Introduction: why do we need a comprehensive definition of software?,” I underline the need for a philosophical analysis that can highlight the multifaceted and paradoxical nature of software. In section “Engineering in written form: the five criteria,” starting from some remarks on the history of programming languages, I define a list of minimal requirements (five criteria) that something needs to meet to be qualified as software. All these requirements share two essential features: the written form and the effectiveness, that is, the need to be executed by a physical machine. In section “Software as text: a hermeneutic model,” I focus on software as form of writing. I develop this idea by using Ricoeur’s hermeneutic model. I claim that software is a type of text. In section “The grammatology of microprocessor,” I focus on the second aforementioned feature: the effectiveness of software. I claim that this effectiveness is based on the analogy between electric circuitries and Boolean logic. Software is a writing and re-writing process that implies an interpretation on two levels, epistemological and ontological.

From mathematical logic to programming-language semantics: a discussion with Tony Hoare

Though logic has permeated through several fields in computing during the past decades, it is not clear exactly how and to what extent it has done so. In an attempt to better understand logic's influence in the history of programming languages (and software engineering in general), I have conducted a discussion with the computing scientist Tony Hoare who, already during the late 1960s, used ideas from mathematical logic to define programming-language semantics. The discussion's transcript, presented in this article, is compared to previously published interviews with Hoare rather technical in that many questions are directly related to mathematical logic and computability theory in particular.

Events and Sightings

Computer History Museum Update; Pioneers of Soviet Computing; Obituary: Hiroshi Wada; Obituary: Zen-iti Kiyasu; Computer History Museum Bits; History of Programming Languages (HOPL-III)

History of programming languages and software engineering

History of programming languages and software engineering

History of programming languages--II

History of programming languages--II

From Babbage to Babel and beyond: A brief history of programming languages

The history of computer programming languages is reviewed, with emphasis on the influences of early languages on later efforts. Four generations of software are presented, beginning with machine code, and continuing through fourth generation languages, paradigms, and environments.

Some Approaches to, and Illustrations of, Programming Language History

This paper describes some factors in, approaches to, and specific elements of, programming language history. It first lists a number of general factors and approaches which can be used to discuss the history of programming languages. After presenting a life cycle for programming language development, it provides numerous illustrations of programming language history and chronology from many of the viewpoints indicated earlier. There is a brief discussion of relevant literature and a section indicating some of the reasons for the vast proliferation of programming languages. Various charts and lists are included. This paper should be viewed as one approach to considering the history of programming languages, rather than as a history of programming languages per se.

Brief Summary of the Early History of COBOL

The two definitive presentations of the history of programming languages are: Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals, by Jean E. Sammet, and History of Programming Languages, edited by R. L. Wexelblat. The former was not intended to be just a history, but was an exposition of the state of the programming language field circa 1966-1967; the detailed descriptions of the origins of the languages in the book were at that time the most complete history published. In 1978 Sammet chaired the ACM/SIGPLAN Conference on the History of Programming Languages (HOPL) from which the text of the same title was created. In that volume are both a formal paper on the history of COBOL and the transcript of Sammet's presentation. This following article is an unedited extract from the formal paper, reprinted with the permission of ACM and Academic Press. We chose not to reprint the complete paper here because it is readily accessible, but we are printing a significant portion of it to provide Annals readers with an overview of the early COBOL development. The full version of the paper was reviewed in draft form by most of the key participants of that time period; they generally did not object to the information provided. Thus, that paper and the extract printed here present an accurate description of which people participated, or played major roles, or did not participate in the language definition.

History of Programming Languages

History of Programming Languages

Using FORTH to control a robot arm

The characteristics of the Cyber 3 robot arm are outlined, with a brief history of programming languages used to control it. The advantages of FORTH over its rivals are given. A program sequence for a robot to reorient an object is given.

The European side of the last phase of the development of ALGOL 60

In preparing this account of some of the developments leading to ALGOL 60 I have primarily sought to present such relevant information that is readily available to myself, but not otherwise accessible or well known. In addition I have tried to answer the specific questions formulated by the organizers of the Conference on the History of Programming Languages. The notes fall in three freely intermixed groups: those that relate to existing documents, those that reflect my own reasoning as a participant in the development, and those that try to answer the organizers' questions. Where the proper support has been lacking I have left open holes in the presentation. Otherwise I have tried to be specific, giving names, dates, and reasons, as far as I have them available. While this manner of presentation seems to me the best way to support more penetrating historical research into the period, it is also bound to give rise to controversy. First, it is openly one-sided, in the manner that any autobiography is. Further, by being specific the presentation will offer sensitive points of attack to those who see the same development from a different angle and with different eyes. When these circumstances are combined with real events that involved differences of opinion and interest, strong reactions are bound to be provoked. This emerged clearly in the remarks from the reviewers of the draft of the paper.