1. Gary MarsdenSlide 1University of Cape Town Comparative Programming Languages Gary Marsden Semester 2 – 2000

2. Gary MarsdenSlide 2University of Cape Town 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

3. Gary MarsdenSlide 3University of Cape Town Why bother?  There are literally thousands of programming languages –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

4. Gary MarsdenSlide 4University of Cape Town 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.

5. Gary MarsdenSlide 5University of Cape Town 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

6. Gary MarsdenSlide 6University of Cape Town When is stuff happening  Course is divided into two parts –Learn new languages (Clean) –Look at theories of language design –Applying theories

7. Gary MarsdenSlide 7University of Cape Town Course Assessment  Two course-works –Programming –Writing (essay)