Transcript intro - University of Cape Town

Comparative Programming Languages
Gary Marsden
Semester 2 – 2000
University of Cape Town
Gary Marsden
Slide 1
Introduction – what I am getting out of this?
 Aim:
– This course is intended to give you an introduction
to different programming languages and the tools
you need to compare them effectively
 Objectives:
– By the end of this course you should not only be
aware of different programming paradigms and
languages, but be able to select the most
appropriate language for a given task
University of Cape Town
Gary Marsden
Slide 2
Why bother?
 There are literally thousands of programming
languages
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Some are good for novices: HyperTalk
Some for string manipulation: SNOBOL
Some for concurrency: Occam
Some for relational databases: SQL
Some for mathematics: APL
Some for absolutely nothing: COBOL
University of Cape Town
Gary Marsden
Slide 3
What will we be looking at?
 To teach this course we will look at lots of
programming languages, but especially
– Clean: a functional language from a research team
in the Netherlands
 We will spend the majority of our time looking
at Clean, as it represents a new paradigm in
programming.
University of Cape Town
Gary Marsden
Slide 4
What will we need?
 Computer resources
– Clean compiler (available for all platforms)
 Text resources
– Clean user manual
– Any book on comparative programming languages
(non are all-encompassing)
– The course Web site
University of Cape Town
Gary Marsden
Slide 5
When is stuff happening
 Course is divided into two parts
– Learn new languages (Clean)
– Look at theories of language design
– Applying theories
University of Cape Town
Gary Marsden
Slide 6
Course Assessment
 Two course-works
– Programming
– Writing (essay)
University of Cape Town
Gary Marsden
Slide 7