Introduction to Programming

Fundamentals
B.Sathis Kumar
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 Programming Fundamentals

It’s about:
a) foundations of programming langauges
b) but also how to design your own languages
c) how to implement them
d) and about PL tools, such as analyzers
e) also learn about some classical C.S. algorithms.

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 Why a software
engineer/developer needs PL
New languages will keep coming
– Understand them, choose the right one.
Write code that writes code
– Be the wizard, not the typist.
Develop your own language.
– Are you kidding? No.
Learn about compilers and interpreters.
– Programmer’s main tools.
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New Languages will Keep
Coming

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 The Reality...
XSLT XQuery
bash
Python javascript
perl C#
Haskell
ActionScript C
Java SQL
Ruby Ocaml
awk C++ latex
PHP
Tcl/TK postscript make ML
Visual Basic B.SATHIS KUMAR VITCC regular 6
A survey: how many languages
did you use?
• Let’s list them here:

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 Explosive Growth
In the past 20 years, computer science has
deepened intellectually, broadened in scope, and
penetrated all areas of modern life.
The web, electronic commerce, social networks,
graphics, gaming, image processing, security,
natural language processing, bio informatics,
machine learning, multi-core processors, sensor
networks, Google-style distributed processing,
XML, software transactions, databases,
operating systems, networks...
This growth puts enormous pressure on
undergraduate curriculum.
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Learning New Languages

it is more important that students

learn how to learn a language rather
than the particulars of a single
language.
Understanding PL fundamentals
makes learning languages much
easier.
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Be prepared to program in new
languages
Languages undergo constant change
– FORTRAN 1953
– ALGOL 60 1960
–C 1973
– C++ 1985
– Java 1995
Evolution steps: 12 years per widely
adopted language

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 Develop your own language
Are you kidding? No. Guess who developed:
– PHP
– Ruby
– JavaScript
– perl
Done by smart students like you
Our goal: learn good academic lessons
– so that your future languages avoid known mistakes

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 Building Languages
Not many people design new general-
purpose languages.
But many people design APIs, configuration
languages, and domain-specific languages.
Understanding PL fundamentals allows
students to know when and how to build
such “little languages”.
What are the abstractions? How do they
interact? What should be expressible? What
should not be?
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Trends in Programming
Languages

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 Trends in programming
languages
programming language and its interpreter/compiler:
– programmer’s primary tools
– you must know them inside out

languages have been constantly evolving ...

– what are the forces driving the change?

... and will keep doing so

– to predict the future, let’s examine the history…

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 ENIAC (1946, University of
Philadelphia)
ENIAC program for external ballistic equations:

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Programming the ENIAC

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 ENIAC (1946, University of
Philadelphia)
programming done by
– rewiring the interconnections
– to set up desired formulas,
etc
Problem (what’s the tedious
part?)
– programming = rewiring
– slow, error-prone
solution:
– store the program in
memory! B.SATHIS KUMAR VITCC 17
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– birth of von Neuman
 UDSAC (1947, Cambridge
University)
the first real computer
– large-scale, fully functional, stored-program
electronic digital computer (by Maurice Wilkes)
problem: Wilkes realized:
– “a good part of the remainder of my life was going to
be spent in finding errors in ... programs”
solution: procedures (1951)
– procedure: abstracts away the implementation
– reusable software was born

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 Assembly – the language
(UNIVAC 1, 1950)
Idea: mnemonic (assembly) code
– Then translate it to machine code by hand (no compiler yet)
– write programs with mnemonic codes (add, sub),
with symbolic labels,
– then assign addresses by hand
Example of symbolic assembler
clear-and-add a
add b
store c
translate it by hand to something like this (understood by CPU)
B100 A200
C300

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Example

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 Assembler – the compiler
(Manchester, 1952)
• it was assembler nearly as we know it, called
AutoCode

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Assembly programming caught
on, but

Problem: Software costs exceeded hardware

costs!

John Backus: “Speedcoding”

– An interpreter for a high-level language
– Ran 10-20 times slower than hand-written
assembly
• way too slow
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 FORTRAN I (1954-57)
Langauge, and the first compiler
– Produced code almost as good as hand-written
– Huge impact on computer science (laid foundations for cs164)
– Modern compilers
– FORTRAN (the language) still in use today

By 1958, >50% of all software is in FORTRAN

Cut development time dramatically

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 Goto considered harmful
L1: statement
if expression goto L1
statement

Dijkstra says: gotos are harmful

– use structured programming
– lose some performance, gain a lot of readability
how do you rewrite the above code into structured
form?
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Object-oriented programming
(1970s)

OO approach
• Model the world as it is

• Simulation based modelling

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Review of historic development
• wired interconnects  stored program (von
Neuman machines)
• lots of common bugs in repeated code 
procedures
• machine code  symbolic assembly (compiled
by hand)
• tedious compilation  assembler (the assembly
compiler)
• assembly  FORTRAN I
• gotos  structured programming 
“OO” programming inheritance,
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