CSC 533: Organization of Programming Languages
Spring 2005

Final Exam Review


Programming Paradigms procedural/imperative programming (e.g., C) basic concept: machine state (memory cells/variables) program by specifying a sequence of statements that alter the state object-based programming (e.g., JavaScript) basic concept: abstract data types program by specifying complex types that interact via message passing object-oriented programming (e.g., C++, Java) basic concept: abstract data types + inheritance + dynamic (late) binding program by defining hierarchies of interacting objects functional programming (e.g., LISP/Scheme) basic concept: functional transformation program by defining and applying transformations to data General Language Issues language evaluation criteria: readability, writability, reliability, ... syntax & semantics BNF grammar, parse trees, ambiguity, EBNF, precedence & associativity operational, axiomatic, & denotational semantics variables & binding variable attributes, type/address/value binding, scope & lifetime static vs. dynamic binding, stack-based memory management, activation records data types primitive types: integer, floating-point, boolean, character, ... pointer: indirect addressing, dynamic memory management heap fragmentation & compaction, garbage collection vs. reference counts complex types: string, enumeration, subrange, array/vector, record/struct expressions & control structures sub-expression evaluation order, compound statements, loops & branching subprograms parameters: by-value, by-result, by-value-result, by-reference, by-name overloading functions/operators, templates abstract data types (requires encapsulation + info hiding) Modula-2: opaque vs. transparent types C++ & Java protection modes: public, protected, private, package-only (Java) OOP in C++ hybrid OOP language, combines procedural code with objects can inherit data fields & member functions, override or add features scope resolution operator can specify member functions from parent class virtual specifies dynamic binding (implemented using pointer) advanced OOP generic types via templates, multiple inheritance (avoid ambiguities with ::) OOP in Java design goals: simple, object-oriented, secure, arch. neutral, portable, ... based on C++ syntax, but removed many confusing/redundant features name resolution at link time, automatic memory reclamation, ... extensive libraries: Math, String, Random, ArrayList, Stack, HashMap Java execution models: applications vs. applets primitive vs. reference types primitive: stack-dynamic (type bound statically, address bound dynamically) passed by-value, can generalize with wrapper classes reference: heap-dynamic, must allocate using new (inherits from Object) passed by-value, but similar to by-reference (since a pointer) general-purpose, (pure) object-oriented programming language similar to C++, can inherit data fields/methods, override, add features can specify methods from parent class by specifying super all methods are dynamically bound by default (can override with static) advanced OOP generic types via inheritance, abstract classes, interfaces JavaScript retained syntactic similarity to C++/Java, diff features due to diff design goals interpreted (code embedded in HTML), dynamic variables, typeless functions useful objects provided, rudimentary facility for defining new classes user security is important, code security isn't LISP/Scheme functional programming (LISP) developed out of AI movement in mid-50's closer to human reasoning (symbolic, list-oriented, transparent memory mgmt) simple & orthogonal: only 2 kinds of data objects (atoms & lists) all computation performed by applying functions to inputs function definitions & function calls also represented as lists Scheme developed at MIT, mid-70's: clean, simple subset of LISP static scoping, first-class functions, efficient tail-recursion syntax S-expressions: atoms (numbers, characters, strings, booleans, symbols) lists -- non-contiguous, dynamic, represented as dotted pair functional expressions: S-expressions that represent function calls memory management types associated with values, not variables all data dynamically allocated, reclaimed via garbage collection makes extensive use of structure sharing primitive functions arithmetic: +, -, *, /, quotient, remainder, max, min, abs, =, <, <= symbolic: car, cdr, cons, list, list-ref, length, member, reverse, append predicates: zero?, positive?, odd?, even?, number?, list?, null?, equal? boolean: and, or, not higher-order: map, apply user-defined functions create new function using define, can nest functions using static scoping control to evaluate functional expr: evaluate each arg, apply function to values conditionals: if-expression, cond-expression (both considered special forms) repetition via recursion: Scheme must perform tail-recursion optimization structuring data association list w/ assoc, trees via nested lists non-functional features I/O (read, read-char, display, load, ...), sequencing (begin), destructive assignment (define, set!), environment definition (let) OOP in Scheme can define OOP objects as functions with state & methods