Computer Science Stack Exchange
Computer Science Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [programming-languages]

Questions related to design, implementation, and analysis of programming languages. NOT for questions about how to program, which are off-topic on this site.

Use this tag for questions about programming language design and implementation and about theoretical concepts underlying existing programming languages.

Questions about concrete features of existing programming languages belongs on Stack Overflow.

For questions related to lambda calculus and type theory consider using the tag.

Related tags

990 questions
145
votes
12 answers

Why are there so many programming languages?

I'm pretty fluent in C/C++, and can make my way around the various scripting languages (awk/sed/perl). I've started using python a lot more because it combines some of the nifty aspects of C++ with the scripting capabilities of awk/sed/perl. But why…
Suresh
  • 5,387
  • 2
  • 27
  • 31
63
votes
10 answers

What is a safe programming language?

Safe programming languages (PL) are gaining popularity. What is the formal definition of safe PL? For example, C is not safe, but Java is safe. I suspect that the property “safe” should be applied to a PL implementation rather than to the PL itself.…
beroal
  • 781
  • 1
  • 5
  • 12
41
votes
2 answers

How does Tarjan's pseudocode work (explained to someone familiar with C or Java)?

The Short Story A famous computer scientist, Tarjan, wrote a book years ago. It contains absolutely bizarre pseudocode. Would someone please explain it? The Long Story Tarjan is known for many accomplishments, including the fact that he was the…
Toothpick Anemone
  • 886
  • 7
  • 13
39
votes
10 answers

Visual Programming languages

Most of us learned programming using "textual" programming languages like Basic, C/C++, and Java. I believe it is more natural and efficient for humans to think visually. Visual programming allows developers to write programs by manipulating…
Mohammad Al-Turkistany
  • 4,417
  • 1
  • 26
  • 35
23
votes
5 answers

What is the formal, rigorous definition of a programming language?

In programming language theory, people study the theory behind programming languages. But I have never heard any formal definition of programming languages themselves. What is the formal definition, not of a particular programming language like…
user107952
  • 349
  • 2
  • 8
20
votes
6 answers

What is the difference between a scripting language and a normal programming language?

What is the difference between programming language and a scripting language? For example, consider C versus Perl. Is the only difference that scripting languages require only the interpreter and don't require compile and linking?
SS Hegde
  • 303
  • 2
  • 6
20
votes
5 answers

How do computers perform operations on numbers that are larger than 64 bits?

There are many reasons why numbers larger than 64 bits must be computed. For example, cryptographic algorithms usually have to perform operations on numbers that are 256 bits or even larger in some cases. However, the programming languages that I…
CCS
  • 343
  • 1
  • 2
  • 5
18
votes
6 answers

Why do more powerful programming languages tend to have slower implementations?

I was reading this article. The author talks about "The Blub Paradox". He says programming languages vary in power. That makes sense to me. For example, Python is more powerful than C/C++. But its performance is not as good as that of C/C++. Is it…
Shashank V M
  • 391
  • 2
  • 24
16
votes
5 answers

What makes a language "optimized" for a specific task?

Often there are programming languages that are specialized for specific tasks. Some programming languages are excellent at array arithmetic (such as matrices and the use of multidimensional arrays), yet some are much better at higher-level…
esote
  • 265
  • 3
  • 9
9
votes
7 answers

Why do we use main function in almost all the programming languages?

Why do we need the main function and can't we execute the code without it? Can't we just execute our code outside the main function by making our own function?
Kakashi San
  • 115
  • 1
  • 2
6
votes
2 answers

What are the characteristics of a typeless programming language?

Assume that we have an imaginary programming language that allows you to assign a Literal to a variable, but does not allow you to set the the data type of the variable, for example Allocate4Bytes an_int_variable 123456; Allocate2Bytes …
user4582812
  • 161
  • 1
  • 2
5
votes
1 answer

Untyped vs Unityped

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language#Type_system Typed versus untyped languages A language is typed if the specification of every operation defines types of data to which the operation is applicable, with the implication…
Tim
  • 4,875
  • 5
  • 36
  • 71
5
votes
1 answer

Why are there multiple computer languages instead of multiple libraries?

If someone realizes that a computer language is deficient under some aspect or the other, couldn't he just create a library for the new language instead of a new language? Couldn't you have a library In C that lets you process list as if they were…
Franõois Bernoit
  • 51
  • 1
5
votes
1 answer

Fine-grained versioning of entities in programming languages

I have a question related to design, implementation of programming languages. I hope it fits here and apologize if it doesn't. All or most programming languages version modules (aka packages, libraries, crates). All the entities in a module (types,…
Blue Nebula
  • 151
  • 1
4
votes
1 answer

What's the difference between environment and memory in terms of programming languages?

I've been reading up on programming languages to better my understanding with the textbook Essentials of Programming Languages (3e) - Friedman & Wand. In a chapter regarding the states of languages (i.e. when we account for the effects that a…
Sean
  • 570
  • 5
  • 18
1
2 3
…
8 9