Principles of

Programming Language
Amit Dua
BITS Pilani Computer Science and Information Systems Department
BITS, Pilani
Pilani Campus

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 BITS Pilani
Pilani Campus

Introductory lecture on PPL

Lecture 1

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 Why should we study Principles of
Programming Language?

Slides motivated by lectures from Prof C. Hota BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Course Motivation

• Reasons for studying concepts of programming

languages
• Increased capacity to express idea.
• Improved background for choosing appropriate languages.
• Increased ability to learn new language.
• Better understanding of the significance of implementation.
• Overall advancement of computing.

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Programming Domains

• Scientific Applications
• Floating point arithmetic, Arrays and Matrices, loops and selection
• FORTRAN, ALGOL 60

• Business Applications
• Reports, Decimal numbers and Character data, Decimal arithmetic
• COBOl

• Artificial Intelligence
• Symbolic Computation mainly with names
• Linked list
• LISP, Prolog

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Programming Domains
Contd..
• System Programming
• Deals with low level features
• UNIX

• Scripting Languages
• Initially began with collection of commands in a file and then followed by control statements ,
functions etc.
• Java Script, PHP

• Special Purpose Languages

• Produce business reports, Instruct programmable Machine tools, System Simulation

• From AI to robotics to computer networks to autonomous vehicles,

programming domains is all pervasive

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 What are we going to study in this
course?

Slides motivated by lectures from Prof C. Hota BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
PPL as a Course

• What is not
– Do not teach you a programming language
– Do not teach you how to program
• What is
– Introduce fundamental concepts of programming languages
– Discuss design issues of various language constructs
– Examine design/implementation choices for these constructs
– Compare design alternatives

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Books

Text Book: Ravi Sethi, "Programming Languages:

Concepts and Constructs" 2nd Edition by Addison
Wesley.

[R1].Robert W. Sebesta, "Concepts of Programming

Languages", 10th Edition by Pearson Publishers.

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 What is the architecture of computer on
which we are programming?

Slides motivated by lectures from Prof C. Hota BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Von Neumann Architecture

• Stored program concept

• Data and instruction have same format

• Interpret sequences as data and instructions

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The von Neumann
Architecture

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Imperative Lang. & von
Neumann Architecture
• Imperative languages, most dominant, because of von
Neumann computers
• Data and programs stored in memory
• Memory is separate from CPU
• Instructions and data are piped from memory to CPU
• Basis for imperative languages
• Variables model memory cells
• Assignment statements model piping
• Iteration is efficient

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The von Neumann Architecture

• Fetch-execute-cycle (on a von Neumann architecture

computer)

initialize the program counter

repeat forever
fetch the instruction pointed by the counter
increment the counter
decode the instruction
execute the instruction
end repeat

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 What makes a good Programming
language?

Slides motivated by lectures from Prof C. Hota BITS Pilani, Pilani Campus
Language evaluation criteria

Language evaluation criteria:

Readability: the ease with which programs can be read
and understood
Writability: the ease with which a language can be used to
create programs
Reliability: a program performs to its specifications under
all conditions
Cost

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Features Related to Readability
Overall simplicity: language is more readable if
– Fewer features and basic constructs
Readability problems occur whenever program’s author uses a subset different
from that familiar to reader
– Fewer feature multiplicity (i.e., doing the same operation with different ways)
– Minimal operator overloading

Orthogonality
– A relatively small set of primitive constructs can be combined in a relatively small
number of ways
– The combination is legal.
– Too much orthogonality can also cause problems

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Features Related to Readability
Control statements
– Sufficient control statements for structured prog.
 can read program from top to bottom w/o jump

Data types and structures

– Adequate facilities for defining data type & structure

Syntax considerations
– Identifier or keywords
– Special words and methods of forming compound statements
– Form and meaning: self-descriptive constructs, meaningful keywords

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Writability
Simplicity and orthogonality
– But, too orthogonal may cause errors undetected

Support for abstraction

– Ability to define and use complex structures or operations in ways that allow
details to be ignored
– Abstraction in process (e.g. subprogram), data

Expressivity
– A set of relatively convenient ways of specifying operations
– Example: the inclusion of for statement in many modern languages

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Reliability
Type checking
– Testing for type errors, e.g. subprogram parameters

Exception handling
– Intercept run-time errors & take corrective measures

Aliasing
– Presence of two or more distinct references for the same memory location

Readability and writability

– A language that does not support “natural” ways of expressing an algorithm will
necessarily use “unnatural” approaches, and hence reduced reliability

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Cost
• Training programmers to use language
• Writing programs (closeness to particular applications)
• Compiling programs
• Executing programs: run-time type checking
• Language implementation system: availability of free
compilers
• Reliability: poor reliability leads to high costs
• Maintaining programs

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Language Evaluation Criteria

CRITERIA

Characteristic READABILITY WRITABILITY RELIABILITY

Simplicity X X X
Orthogonality X X X
Data types X X X
Syntax design X X X
Support for abstraction X X
Expressivity X X
Type checking X
Exception handling X
Restricted aliasing X

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Language Design Trade-Offs
Reliability vs. cost of execution
– e.g., Java demands all references to array elements be checked for proper
indexing but that leads to increased execution costs
Readability vs. writability
– e.g., use of many powerful operators (and a large number of new symbols),
allowing complex computations to be written in a compact program but at the
cost of poor readability
Writability (flexibility) vs. reliability
– e.g., C++ pointers are powerful and very flexible but not reliably used

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Questions

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Discussion

• Evaluate and discuss the Assembly language

• Evaluate C language and MATLAB for the following

application
1) Matrix operations
2) System programming

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 Language Implementation
Compiler - source code translation into machine code (all at
once)
Interpreter - machine is brought up to the language (one
statement at a time)

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Implementation Methods
• Compilation
• Programs are translated into machine language.

• Pure Interpretation
• Programs are interpreted by another program known
as an interpreter.

• Hybrid Implementation Systems

• A compromise between compilers and pure
interpreters.

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Layered View of Computer

The operating system and

Language implementation
are layered over machine
interface of a computer

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The Compilation
Process

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Compilation

• Translate high-level program (source language) into

machine code (machine language).

• Compilation process has several phases:

• lexical analysis: converts characters in the source program into lexical units e.g.:
identifiers / keywords, operators, punctuation…
• syntax analysis: transforms lexical units into parse trees which represent the
syntactic structure of program.
• Intermediate code generation & Semantics analysis: generate intermediate code
and does type checking.
• Code optimization: (optional)
• code generation: machine code is generated.

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Additional Compilation
Terminologies
• Load module (executable image):
• the user and system code together.

• Linking and loading:

• the process of collecting system program units and
linking them to a user program.
• As well as linking other user programs to it.

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 Compiled C

Source Linker
compiler .o
code and
files
in C loader

Machine
code (exe)

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Pure Interpretation
• No translation
Program interpreted by another program (interpreter) without translation
– Interpreter acts a simulator or virtual machine
– Machine is brought to the level of language by building higher level machine
called an interpreter that can run the language directly.
• Easier implementation of programs (run-time errors can easily and immediately be
displayed)
• Slower execution (10 to 100 times slower than compiled programs)
Decoding of higher level language programs is more complex, decoding has to be
done every time a statement is executed.
• Often requires more space
• Used in APL, SNOBOL, LISP.
• Now rare for traditional high-level languages
• Significant comeback with some Web scripting languages (e.g., JavaScript, PHP)

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Pure Interpretation Process

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 Comparisons
• Interpretation is slower as decoding of higher level language programs is
more complex, decoding has to be done every time a statement is executed.
• Compiled languages have bias towards static properties since all compiling
decisions are made at translation time. Interpreted languages can deal with
dynamic properties.
• Interpretation is more flexible: due to direct running on the source code,
interpreter can allow to add features or correct errors in the source code.

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Hybrid Implementation Systems

• A compromise between compilers and pure interpreters.

• A high-level language program is translated to an

intermediate language that allows easy interpretation.

• Faster than pure interpretation since the source language

statements are decoded only once.
• Examples
• Perl programs are partially compiled to detect errors before interpretation.
• Initial implementations of Java were hybrid;
• the intermediate form, byte code, provides portability to any machine that has a
byte code interpreter and a run-time system (together, these are called Java Virtual
Machine).

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Hybrid
Implementation
Process

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Just-in-Time Implementation
Systems
• Initially translate programs to an intermediate language.

• Then compile the intermediate language of the subprograms

into machine code when they are called Machine code
version is kept for subsequent calls.

• JIT systems are widely used for Java programs.

• .NET languages are implemented with a JIT system.

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Summary

• The study of programming languages is valuable for a number of reasons:

• Increase our capacity to use different constructs
• Enable us to choose languages more intelligently
• Makes learning new languages easier

• Most important criteria for evaluating programming languages include:

• Readability, writability, reliability, cost

• Major influences on language design have been

• machine architecture and software development methodologies

• The major methods of implementing programming languages are:

• compilation, pure interpretation, and hybrid implementation

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Questions

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