CS 215: Reading Assign on PL Evaluation Criteria
By bong_domingo
@bong_domingo (878)
Philippines
November 15, 2007 8:09pm CST
The language evaluation criteria described in your readings provide a framework for language for language design. However, according to an insightful paper on language design by Hoare (1973)* states that "there are so many important but conflicting criteria, that their reconciliation and satisfaction is a major engineering task". Site possible conflicting criteria and discuss the implication of this/these conflict that leads to certain language design trade offs.
*"Hints on Programming Design." Proceedings ACM SIGACT/SIGPLAN Conference on Principles of Programming Languages. 1973
2 people like this
4 responses
@bojhe24 (12)
• Philippines
18 Nov 07
As stated in the assigned reading text, there are 3 common criteria in evaluating programming languages namely - readability, writability, and reliability (some includes portability).
As far as I take it, when one programming language has a strong reliability features, others come along (readability, writability). Portability is another issue, important but minor. In the idea of conflicting criteria, I really did not grasp any conflicts but rather when you have readability and writability as a prior criteria in language designing, these may lead to some issues on its reliability factors. Having proper simplicity, control structures, syntax design, etc. but does not offer proper error checking along the way, the PL would be less reliable. Of course, cost (both intangible and tangible) is always there to consider in all criteria.
1 person likes this
@bong_domingo (878)
• Philippines
18 Nov 07
i think you're referring to flexibility and reliability... when a language is highly readable or perhaps writable then there's some implication on reliability issues. like for example allowing flexibility in accessing a memory address though aliasing affect its memory cells integrity of its value being held :-)
@aisuseijin (16)
• Philippines
19 Nov 07
I observed that their is a conflict between the simplicity of a language and its flexibility, simplicity and data type structure and cost of memory.Readability and writability conflicts in cost of memory. making a program readable and writable takes more memory in terms of longer keywords. that's all.
@bong_domingo (878)
• Philippines
19 Nov 07
i don't think i can give credit to that ... i just presented that argument this morning in class... try another one :-)
@goodsign (2287)
• Malaysia
16 Nov 07
Hi bong_domingo.
Conference proceedings still acquires on an ongoing basis for APL quote quad, computer graphics, and the proceedings/ ACM-SIGMOD on Management of Data".
As there is still an argument, psychological and cognitively oriented approaches to SLA* represent but one dimension of the complex of phenomena and their interrelationships which need to be grouped together under the label of SLA*. - [*Single Language Acquisition].
HAPPY DADDY.
@iryn18 (32)
• Philippines
19 Nov 07
Nowadays, there are different programming language and each of these has the concetps of various constructs and capalities. Evaluating a programming language is conflicting because all of the criteria are important. When we talk about readability and along these are overall simplicity,orthogonality,syntax and data types and structures. These features of readablity can be able in one programming language but on some programming language like Java,some of this can't be process or not be suited. The best way to evaluate one programming language is when it has reliability then along the way readability and writability will come out. When one programming has reliability and maintanance this would possibly the best language but conflicts will also be the problem. For instanc, the syntax of ADA is different from the syntax in C/C++(discussion in class).
