COMPILER CONSTRUCTION WEEK-1 THE ROLE OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

An Overview The widespread use of the computer programming languages began in 1957, after the introduction of FORTRAN. FORTRAN allows Engineers and Scientists to write formulas using traditional symbols of mathematics. For example + for addition, * for multiplication etc. Such notations were actually the starting point for the design of programming languages The formula e.g. B2 – 4AC was written in Fortran as the following expression: B**2 – 4.0 * A * C Fortran takes its name from Formula Translation; readable formulas were translated into machine instructions for the IBM-704 (i.e. in the form of zeros and ones) Besides describing a result, a formula or expression X+Y*Z can be treated as an algorithm for computing the result.

An Overview The algorithm is to multiply Y with Z and add the result to X. An expression can be therefore be translated into machine instructions for evaluating the expression. Since then hundreds of programming languages have been designed and implemented. Related programming languages are grouped into families. Members of a family differ in taste more than substance. Having learned one member, it is easier to learn another, since the concepts from one member carry over to other member of the same family.

An Introduction Programming languages are notations. They are used for specifying, organizing, and reasoning about computations. Programming languages have evolved far beyond their origins in machines. Languages can help not only by improving the readability of individual program fragments, but also by providing ways of organizing and managing large programs. A readable program in any programming language cannot be run directly on a machine. It required adopting two approaches to running or implementing a program: it can be run by compiling it or by interpreting it.

Higher-Level Languages: Programming languages are invented to make machines easier to use. Also they make problems easier to solve. The informal term “level” is useful for gross distinction between languages. Levels of readability for programs are analogous to levels of readability for English text. Consider English text: Are the individual words readable? Do the sentences make sense? What are the main ideas? Words, sentences, paragraphs, sections, chapters are levels of structure in English. Machine computations are low level, full of details that have more to do with the inner workings of the machine than with what the computation is for. A typical machine-level operation might add numbers or compare characters.

Higher-Level Languages: Machine Language is the native language of a computer; it is the notation to which the computer responds directly. The term code originally referred to machine language, although code is now used more broadly to refer to any programming text. A language is higher level if it is independent of the underlying machine. A language is general purpose if it can be applied to a wide range of problems. For example, Fortran was initially created for numerical computing, LISP for artificial intelligence, Simula for simulation, Prolog for natural language processing. Yet, these languages are general enough to have been applied to wide range of problems.

Machine Language: Programs in machine language are usually unintelligible (meaningless) at the lowest level, the most detailed level, since they consist only of 0’s and 1’s. Machine language is unsuitable for programming. Machine language is unintelligible to a human, while it is exactly what the machine understands. Then there was a need to develop new language, which can be represented more easily than machine language.

Assembly Language: Assembly language is a variant of machine language, in which names and symbols take the place of the actual codes for machine operations, values and storage locations, making individual instruction more readable. Individual instructions in assembly language are readable, but limitations of the underlying machine can lead to make program complicated. A readable relative of this program has four main components. –A memory –A program –An input file –An output file

Assembly Language: The memory consists of a sequence of locations, 0,1,…., each capable of holding single integer value at a time. A machine address is the number of a location in memory. The integer held in a location will be referred to as the contents of the location. A program consists of a sequence of instructions. An input file consists of a sequence of values consumed one at a time by read instructions. An output file consists of the sequence of values produced one at a time by write instructions.

Benefits of Higher-Level Languages Higher-level languages have replaced machine and assembly language in virtually all areas of programming, because they provide benefits like the following: –Readable familiar notations. –Machine independence. –Availability of program libraries. –Consistency checks during implementation that can detect errors. Portability is another term for machine independence; a language is portable if programs in the language can be run on different machines with little or no change. Such benefits led to Fortran’s immediate acceptance as the language of choice for scientific programming. For example, originally written in assembly language, the UNIX operating system kernel was rewritten in the programming language C in 1973, by Denis Ritchie.

Problems of Scale: The problems of programming are ones of scale. Any one-change to a program is easy to make. Any isolated program fragment can be understood and checked in its entirety. With large programs, the effect of a change can ripple trough the program, perhaps introducing errors or bugs into some forgotten corner. Programming languages can help in two ways. First, readable and compact notations reduce the likelihood of errors. Small programs are easier to get right than large ones. With large programs, programming languages can help by providing way of organizing computations so that they can be understood one piece at a time.

Factor of Human Error: Due to programming error, the rocket-carrying Mariner I, an unmanned probe to the planet Venus, had to be destroyed 290 seconds after launch on July 22, The program in the ground computer was supposed to behave as follows: If not in radar contact with the rocket then Do not correct its flight path But, in error, the initial “not” was missing. As a result, the ground computer continued to blindly guide the rocket even after radar contact was lost. The program had previously been used without fault in four lunar launches.

Factor of Human Error: After the loss it was the questions that how to detect errors? And the answer was to adopt two techniques “Code inspection” and “Program Testing”. Code inspection: in this technique one or more people read someone else’s program, line by line. Program testing: consists of running the program on sample input data. Both techniques are standard practice in software engineering. They can be used with any programming language. Both are incomplete; they rely on the imagination and foresight of the inspectors and testers, and are subject to human limitations.

Role for Programming Languages: It is hopeless to establish the correctness of a program by testing, unless the internal structure of the program is taken into account. Our only hope is to carefully design a program so that its correctness can be understood in terms of its structure. The art of programming is the art of organizing complexity. We must organize the computations in such a way that our limited powers are sufficient to guarantee that the computation will establish the desired effect.

Programming Paradigms: New languages are not introduced lightly. A language takes on a life of its own as people invest in it by learning it and building up collection of programs in it. The effect needed to introduce a new language is substantial, not only in designing it and implementing it, but in teaching it and supporting it. Following are the categories of languages.

Imperative Programming: Imperative languages are action oriented, i.e. a computation is viewed as a sequence of actions. The imperative family began with Fortran; Pascal and C, are general-purpose imperative languages. Other examples are Algol60, CPL,BCPL and Algol68. Pascal and C embody key ideas of imperative programming. The term “imperative” comes from command or action; the computation model is that of a sequence of action on an underlying machine.

Functional Programming: Functional programming is worth studying as a programming style in its own right; as a setting for studying concepts such as types; and as a technique for language description. The basic concepts of functional languages originated with LISP (LISt Processor), a language designed in 1958 for applications in artificial intelligence. The LISP language is designed primarily for symbolic data processing. It has been used for symbolic calculations in differential and integral calculus, electrical circuit theory, mathematical logic, game playing, and other fields of artificial intelligence. Other examples are ISWIM, SASL, SCHEME, ML etc.

Object-Oriented Programming: As programs get larger, the natural unit of programming is a grouping of data and operations. The progression of concepts for such grouping can be described in terms of modules, user-defined types (for example, stacks), and classes (as in object-oriented programming). Object-oriented programming owes much to Simula’s origins in simulation. The language was designed as both a description language and a programming language by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl between 1961 and Simula changed the way people think about programming. C++ and Smalltalk are popular for object-oriented programming. (JAVA too) Although both got notion of objects and classes form Simula.

Logic Programming: Logic programming deals with relations rather than function. Where it fits, programs are concise, consisting of facts and rules. The language uses the fact and rules to deduce responses to queries. Prolog is the best example of this category. Prolog comes from PROgrammation en LOGique). Prolog was developed in 1972 for natural language processing in French by Alain Colmerauer and Philipee Roussel. Prolog has since been used for a range of applications from database to expert systems. Prolog programs have the brevity and expressiveness of logic.

Choice of Language: The choice of programming language depends in part on the programming to be done, and in part on external factors, such as availability, support, and training. For example, the initial prototype of the UNIX system spelling checker, was written in by combining existing utility programs (tools) in the UNIX environment. Several years later, once the spelling checker became sufficiently popular, an improved version was implemented in C to speed up checking. Different goals led to the two versions being implemented in different languages.