CMPT 383 Programming Language Concepts Information

References

• Programming languages: principles and paradigms, Allen Tucker, Robert Noonan.
  • … in the SFU Library
  • … Wikipedia book sources (hardcover)
  • … Wikipedia book sources (softcover)
• Other good books:
  • Programming Language Pragmatics, Michael L. Scott: in the SFU Library (includes web edition); from Wikipedia book sources
  • Concepts in Programming Languages, John C. Mitchell: in the SFU Library (includes web edition); from Wikipedia book sources

Wikipedia Links

Let's be honest: Wikipedia articles are often the best introductory descriptions to concepts you'll find anywhere.

• Computer program
• Programming paradigm
  • Imperative programming
  • Declarative programming
  • Functional programming
• Compilers and Interpreters:
  • Compiler
  • Interpreter
  • Bytecode
  • Just-In-Time (JIT) Compilers
  • LLVM
• Type Systems
  • Type checking: static vs. dynamic
  • Name binding
  • Dynamic binding
  • Type inference
  • Duck typing
  • Strong typing
  • Weak typing
  • Type safety
• Memory Management
  • Manual memory management
  • Garbage collection
  • Reference counting
  • Dynamic memory allocation
  • Static memory allocation
  • Stack-based memory allocation
  • Memory leak
  • Weak reference
• Variables
  • Scope
  • First-class function
  • Closure
  • Callback
  • Immutable Object
• Concurrent Computing/Parallel Programming
  • Thread
  • Inter-process communication
  • Thread safety
  • Thread pool pattern
  • Other concurrency patterns
  • Coroutine
  • Vector processor
  • Cluster computing

Compiler Tech

• LLVM project, a “Low-Level Virtual Machine” compiler infrastructure project
• Facebook releases a PHP just-in-time compiler
• Memory Management Reference
• Practical Garbage Collection
• A JVM Does That?
• Visualization of JITted code [in PyPy]

Functions and Scope

• What's a Closure?
• Closures explained with JavaScript
• Making code more readable with anonymous functions
• Getting comfortable with Javascript callbacks

Concurrent and Parallel Code

• Language concurrency modules: Java java.util.concurrent, Python multiprocessing, Haskell parallel package.
• Concurrent matrix multiplication in Python
• Python - parallelizing CPU-bound tasks with multiprocessing
• Parallelism is not concurrency
• Auto-vectorization with gcc 4.7

Programmer Efficiency

• Faith, Hope, and Love: An essay on software science’s neglect of human factors [PDF]
• An Empirical Comparison of Seven Programming Languages, from IEEE Computer, vol 33 (2000), no 10.
  • Empirical Comparison, SFU Library link
  • Empirical Comparison draft
  • Note particularly Figure 6 (in the published version; Figures 15 and 16 in the draft) for a comparison of programmer productivity.
• Haskell vs. Ada vs. C++ vs. Awk vs. … An Experiment in Software Prototyping Productivity
• Are All Programming Languages The Same? A lines-of-code language comparison.
• Computer Language Benchmarks Game: lines-of-code comparison
• The Hammer Principle: “I enjoy using this language” rankings
• It's Faster Because It's C, a deconstruction of who really needs to care about “faster” code.

Languages and Language Choices

• Which language?
• How to Pick a Language
• Which programming language should I use?
• 10 programming languages worth checking out
• Modern Language Wishlist
• Advantages Of Being A Polyglot Programmer
• Every Language Fixes Something