Lukman Singleton

Chap 1

11. What primitive control statement is used to build more complicate control statements in

languages that lack them?

The selection statement plus GOTO is used to build more complicated control statements such

as FOR loop.

12. What construct of a programming language provides process abstraction?

Subprograms

13. What does it mean for a program to be reliable?

A program is said to be reliable if it performs to its specifications under all conditions.

14. Why is type checking the parameter of a subprogram important?

It can lead to lots of hard to debug errors.

15.What is aliasing?

2 or more distinct names that can be used to access the same memory cell.

16. What is exception handling?

The ability of a program to intercept run time errors.

17. Why is readability important to writability?

If it is hard to read it is hard to write.

18.How is the cost of compilers for a given language related to the design of that language?

Many run time checks will prohibit fast code execution. If optimization is used compiling will

be slower but execution will be faster.

19. What has been the strongest influence on programming language design over the past 50

years?

The basic architecture of computers(von Neumann).

20. What is the name of the category of programming languages whose structure is dictated by
the von Neumann computer architecture?

Imperative languages

21. What two programming language deficiencies were discovered as a result of the research in

software development in the 1970s?

Incompleteness of type checking and inadequacy of control statements.

22.What are the three fundamental features of an object-oriented programming language?

Data abstraction,inheritance and dynamic (run-time) method.

23.What language was the first to support the three fundamental features of object-oriented

programming?

Smalltalk

24.What is an example of two language design criteria that are in direct conflict with each

other?

Reliability and cost of execution

25. What are the three general methods of implementing a programming language?

Compilation,pure interpretation, hybrid implementation systems

26.Which produces faster program execution, a compiler or a pure interpreter?

Compiler

27. What role does the symbol table play in a compiler?

Serves as a database for the compilation process.

28. What does a linker do?

It collects system programs and link them to user programs.

29. Why is the von Neumann bottleneck important?

It is the primary limiting factor in the speed of von Neumann architecture computers.

30. What are the advantages of implementing a language with a pure interpreter?

Easy implementation of many source-level debugging operations, because all run time error
 messages can refer to source level units.

1. Why is useful for a programmer to have some background in language design, even though her

or she may never actually design a programming language?

Increased capacity to express ideas, appropriate language choice, learn new languages more

easily, better understanding of the significance of implementation, better use of already known

languages, overall advancement of computing.

2. How can knowledge of programming language characteristic benefit the whole computer

community?

If those who choose languages were better informed, perhaps better languages would squeeze

out poorer ones.

3. What programming language has dominated scientific computing over the past 50 years?

FORTRAN

4. What programming language has dominated business applications over the past 50 years?

COBOL

5. What programming language has dominate artificial intelligence over the past 50 years?

LISP

6. In what language is UNIX written?

7. What is the disadvantage of having too many features in a language?

It tends to lead to knowing only a subset.

8. How can user-defined operator overloading harm the readability of a program?

If the operations are used in odd unintuitive ways.

9. What is one example of a lack of orthogonality in the design of C?

C has 2 structured data types (arrays and structs) arrays can be returned from functions but

structs can't.
10. What language used orthogonality as a primary design choice?

Algol 68