Ulf's Home-Page of Programming Language Design

	Analysis	Requirements & Principles	architecture: Paradigms	substance: Abstractions	structure: Domains	building blocks: Features			surface: Syntactics	Defining PLs	Language List
						foundational	safety: type systems, etc.	flexibilized: polymorphism, etc.

Note that programming languages are in fact languages: (1) They use symbols unrelated to their meaning. (2) The order of the symbols is not arbitrary. (3) The meaning of symbols depends on the context (overloading is an extreme case). (4) They have morphemes (c.f. Jabberwocky).
C.f. the ethymology of PL symbols and keywords.

If you know further references, please don't hesitate to tell me (Ulf Schünemann), likewise if you have any suggestions.

• Domain and Requirement Analysis for Programming Languages
  • Domains in Programming Language Development
  • Requirements Analysis
  • What Happens to Programs?
  • Programm Development Processes
  • What Kind of Changes Occur in the Design/Programm?
  • The Program Design/Implementation Boundary
• Requirements Specification and Development Principles for Programming Languages
  • Irreducible Programming Language Requirements
  • General Advice
  • Orthogonality and Expressiveness
  • Evaluating Programming Languages
  • Specific Rules
  • Development Methods for Programming Languages
• The Solution Domain
  • Paradigms -- The Architecture of Programming Languages
    • Paradigms (Introduction)
    • Ontological Foundation: Models-of-Computation Paradigms
    • Semantic Relation: Computer Programming or Code/Execution Paradigms
    • Software Decomposition Paradigms
  • Abstractions -- The Building Substance of Programming Languages
    • Forms of Abstraction
    • Procedural Abstraction
    • What is a Type?
    • Data Abstraction, Objects, Types, (Co)Algebras -- Hiding The Representation of Data
  • Domains -- The Structure of Programming Languages
    • Common Top-Level Ontology of Programming Languages
    • Binding: The Semantic Relation for Names
    • Ambiguity Within The Same Environment
    • The Connections between Names, References, Values, Variables
    • The Connections between Classes, Prototypes, Inheritance, Instantiation
  • Features -- The Building Blocks of Programming Languages
    • The Language Design Space
    • Empirical Results on Language Features
    • Decomposition / Structuring / Code Management
    • Datavalues: Constructors And Types
    • Other Language Features
    1. Foundational Features of Programming Languages
    2. Inheritance and Delegation Mechanisms
    3. Other Mechanisms, etc.
    4. Type Systems, etc. -- The Safety Features of Programming Languages
       • Typed Languages
       • Types: Implicit vs. Explicit
       • Typing Features for Various Safety Aspects
    5. Polymorphism, etc. -- Making Safety More Flexible
       • Research Directions for More Flexible Type Systems
       • Type Systems Feature Table
       • Types: Polymorphism and Opaque Types
  • Syntactics -- The Surface of Programming Languages
    • Syntactic Variation
    • Morphologic Variation
    • Syntactic Sugars
    • Code Layout Features
• Defining Programming Languages
  • General
  • Defining Morphology and Syntax
  • Notations for Checking Rules
  • Styles of Defining Computational Semantics
  • Some Techniques of Defining Computational Semantics
  • OOPL State Models
  • Calculi/Models as Semantic Basis for Semantics-defining Formalisms
• Maintainance and Evolution: see Evolving A Programming Language.
• Examples: Ulf's Programming Language List
  • Language Links
  • Modeling, Specification, Design Formalisms
  • More or Less Object-Oriented
  • Beyond Classical OOP: Objects with Implicit Invocation
  • Classical Multi-Paradigm with OOP
  • Functional (+/- Side-Effects, not Object-Oriented)
  • Logic (not Object-Oriented)
  • Other Languages
  • Comparison of Programming Languages

• Other links
  • Literature and Links
  • The Programming Language Research Community
  • Teaching About Programming Languages
  • Constructing Language Processors

Abbreviations: ADT = abstract data type; HOF = Higher order functions; LC = lambda-calculus; LNCS = Lecture Notes of Computer Science (series from Springer); OB = object-based; OO = object-oriented; OTOH = on the other hand; PL = programming language; SW = software.

Literature and Links

• PLE Lecture notes -- Linguistics
• Gary T Leavens' Introduction to the Literature On Programming Language Design
• Maurice van Keulen's annotated list of books and papers
• Many articles and papers on many detailed issues can be found at The Collection of Computer Science Bibliographies

The Programming Language Research Community

• Mark Leone's Programming Language Research
• Programming Languages Conferences
• OOP Research Groups Worldwide
• ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
• Strategic Directions in Computing Research Programming Languages Working Group
• The Types email Forum
• OO type theory people and links

Teaching About Programming Languages

An (incomplete) list of Courses in Principles and Implementation of Programming Languages. I just want to add:

• The University of York (Canada): Programming Language Fundamentals (fall 1997), Programming Language Desgin (winter 1998)
• Williams Collage: Principles of Programming Languages (Spring, 1997) Using Louden's "Programming Languages: Principles and Practices" (cf. [Louden])
• and surely many more ...

Constructing Language Processors

• The comp.compilers newsgroup
• Introductions to compiler development:
  • Let's Build a Compiler (online tutorial for compiler construction)
  • Modern compiler implementation in ML, in Java, in C.
  • Introduction to parsing C++
• Parser generators:
  • Lists: Lexers and parser generators, Lexer and parser generators.
  • dCG (draft) Code Generator
  • Java Compiler Compiler (JavaCC)
  • ML-Yacc 2.4 user manual and ML-Lex (New Jersey ML comes with a version of yacc & lex)
• Grammars for parser generators:
  • ANSI C grammar (yacc)
  • Links to C++ grammars cf Introduction to parsing C++
  • Java grammar for lex + yacc, for ANTLR, attribute grammar for Java
  cf. descriptive grammars mentioned in the language list
• Free compilers/interpreters:
  • Catalog of Free Compilers and Interpreters: introduction
  • Watcom 11
  • The Free Compilers list [Geneva]: indexes compilers, interpreters, and language-related tools free and in source.
  • Standard ML of New Jersey
  • Java resources, including links to ML->JBC compilers, Java->C converters, ...
• Misc:
  • Boehm Garbage collector for C++

Analysis

Requirements & Principles

Paradigms

Abstractions

Structure

Features

foundational

safety

flexible typing

Syntactics

Defining PLs

Language List