First Assignment

Written on 19.27 by Unknown

Greetings to all the readers of this post, I know this blog is pretty much got abandoned since 2012, I need 2 years to finally post another post in this blog of mine. This first post in 2014 is due to an assignment that has been given to me by Mr. Tri Djoko Wahjono, Ir, M.Sc as the first assignment in Programming Language Concepts. So, I required to answer 10 questions from Sebesta's Book named Concepts of Programming Language.

Here is the answer of the review questions:

1.     Why is it useful for a programmer to have some background in language design, even though he or she may never actually design a programming language?

It is important for a programmer to have the background in language design whether the programmer someday will make a new programming language or not, because they need to know how the programming language works in order to help them choosing a suitable language, learning new language easier, better use of the language they have known, and advancement of computing skill.


2.     How can knowledge of programming language characteristics benefit the whole computing community?

The knowledge of programming language characteristics gives a lot of benefits for the one who learn about them, because if you know the characteristic of each languages that you use then you can analyze and choose which language that suitable and more efficient for you to use.


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

The programming language, which is dominating the scientific computing over these past 50 years, is FORTRAN.


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

The programming language, which is dominating the business application over these past 50 years, is COBOL.


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

The programming language, which is dominating the artificial intelligence over these past 50 years, is LISP.


Here is the answer of the problem set questions:

1.     Do you believe our capacity for abstract thought is influenced by our language skills? Support your opinion.

Yes, I do believe so because programming language skills require you to think more logically and coherently (abstract thought), so if you have a bad programming language skills, it can be concluded that your capacity of abstract thought is bad.


2.    What are some features of specific programming languages you know whose rationales are a mystery to you?

I think nearly all the thing that connected to programming language is still a big mystery to me because I just learned about C language recently. I also feel amazed that this language is the foundation of our society in this era.

3.   What arguments can you make for the idea of a single language for all programming domains?

I thought it is better to use only a single language for all programming domains because it will make programmer life easier since they won’t need to learn a lot of different languages just to make a software, and they also can save their time to learn new language every time the new programming domain is out.

4.   What arguments can you make against the idea of a single language for all programming domains?

It is a bad idea to make only a single language for all programming domains because the diversity of the programming language make us free to choose which programming language that we think easier and comfortable to use.  

5.     Name and explain another criterion by which languages can be judged (in addition to those discussed in this chapter).

Efficiency is another criterion that can be a parameter to determine how good a programming language is. It means that a programming language that can produce a result with only a few line of code is more efficient than other programming language that requires hundreds line of codes to produce the same result.


This is the answers of mine for the given questions.
Thanks for reading this post and I hope this post can be a help.

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