John R. Mashey
Abstract
In 50 years, we’ve already seen numerous programming systems come and (mostly) go, although some have remained a long time and will probably do so for: decades? centuries? millennia? The questions about language designs, levels of abstraction, libraries, and resulting longevity are numerous. Why do new languages arise? Why is it sometimes easier to write new software than to adapt old software that works? How many different levels of languages make sense? Why do some languages last in the face of “better” ones?
- Vinge, V. 1999. A Deepness in the Sky. New York: Tor, 222-228.Google Scholar
- Sammet, J. 1969. Programming Languages---History and Fundamentals. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Wexelblat, R., ed. 1981. History of Programming Languages. New York: Academic Press. (Final proceedings of ACM SIGPLAN History of Programming Languages Conference, Los Angeles, CA, June 1-3, 1978.)Google Scholar
- Dolotta, T., and J. Mashey. 1976. An Introduction to the Programmer's Workbench. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Software Engineering (October 13-15), IEEE 76CH1125-4 C: 164-168. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Mashey, J. 1976. Using a Command Language as a High-level Programming Language. Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Software Engineering (October 13-15), IEEE 76CH1125-4 C: 169-176. Google ScholarDigital Library
- Boggs, P., and J. Mashey. 1982. Cable Repair Administrative System. Bell System Technical Journal 61 (July-August), Part 2: 1275-1291.Google Scholar
- McIlroy, M.D. 1969. Mass-produced Software Components. In Software Engineering, ed. P. Naur and B. Randell. Garmisch, Germany: NATO Report (October 7-11).Google Scholar
Index Terms
- Languages, Levels, Libraries, and Longevity: New programming languages are born every day. Why do some succeed and some fail?
Recommendations
Languages as libraries
PLDI '11Programming language design benefits from constructs for extending the syntax and semantics of a host language. While C's string-based macros empower programmers to introduce notational shorthands, the parser-level macros of Lisp encourage ...
Languages as libraries
PLDI '11: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and ImplementationProgramming language design benefits from constructs for extending the syntax and semantics of a host language. While C's string-based macros empower programmers to introduce notational shorthands, the parser-level macros of Lisp encourage ...
Reviews
Manuel E. Bermudez
Mashey speculates on the reasons for the success of some programming languages, and the failure of others. After some initial speculation about the role of "programmer archaeologists" in the distant future, he describes various levels of programming languages, and presents anecdotal evidence from Bell Labs in the 1970s, arguing (presumably, since the article isn't clear about this) that raising the language level is what made languages like awk unexpectedly popular. The author then discusses libraries, and the acceptance and longevity of programming languages, presenting four goals that a language might need to achieve in order to gain widespread acceptance: addressing a problem domain, raising the level of abstraction, improving on data types, and (a bit tongue-in-cheek) being supported by a strong vendor. The author offers a few future possibilities: programming languages that might follow innovations in embedded central processing unit (CPU) instruction sets, tight and loosely coupled parallelism, and later binding times on future, faster computers. The article is not well written. The author discusses programming language levels at length, including anecdotes, and then abruptly drops the issue and switches to discussing libraries. He then abruptly moves on to his list of goals for successful languages. It is possible to see how his anecdotes might lend some support to his list of goals for future successful languages (an intriguing possibility), but he never makes the case. It is impossible to see how his discussion of libraries fits into the gist of the article. The various facts and anecdotes, although always interesting to hear, are not woven into any conclusions whatsoever. The final section, "Building Better Languages," fades into irrelevance. In summary, this is a speculative article that purports to outline criteria (the author calls them goals) for the widespread acceptance of future programming languages. The criteria are interesting and worth knowing about, but the author fails to substantiate them. Online Computing Reviews Service
Access critical reviews of Computing literature here
Become a reviewer for Computing Reviews.
Comments