CSci 4651 Programming languages -- Resources.

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Reading

• Corrections of typos in the textbook. Make sure to check this out if something in the book doesn't make sense. If you notice a typo that's not on the list, e-mail it to the author.
• The following two articles describe examples of highly successful use of Lisp in industry:
  1. "Beating the averages" by Paul Graham talks about his choice of Lisp as a language for a start-up company Viaweb which eventually evolved into Yahoo!Store, a popular e-commerce software that runs about 20,000 online stores. The article explains why Lisp was chosen and how it helped the startup to "outrun" its competitors.
  2. "Inside Orbitz" by Carl de Marcken details the use of various languages (including Lisp, Java, C++) in an online air fare search software Orbitz (still very much in use and very popular).
  Our discussion will focus on use of different languages for different purposes and Paul Graham's claim about advantages of Lisp for software development. All points of view are welcome!
• Handout on call-by-name and call-by-value lambda-calculus.

General resources

• Timeline of programming languages development, links to more timelines.
• Aspect-oriented programming (a wikipedia article).

Scheme resources

• MIT Scheme reference guide
• DrScheme main page: free download and documentation.
• A good introduction to Scheme
• In-class examples:
  • January 27th examples.

C++ and other early imperative languages

• An example of pass-by-name parameter passing in Algol 60
• In-class example: C++ type system, pointers, arrays
• Some C++ code examples, including:
  • Pointers
  • Arrays
  • Structures
• Bjarne Stroustrup's C++ Style and Technique FAQ - answers to C++ design questions directly from the C++ designer Bjarne Stroustrup (if you are wondering how this name is pronounced - click here, feel free to scroll down the page for other entertaining information)

OCaml resources

• A Hundred Lines of Caml - an excellent brief overview of Caml syntax and features.
• A Concise Introduction to Objective Caml - well-organized, a great reference.
• Objective Caml manual
• Download
• OCaml toplevel system lists commands for the interpreter, such as #use to load files and #quit to quit.

OCaml examples

• First examples
• Examples of OCaml records and variant types
• ML Lab (March 13th)
• References in OCaml

Generic types and templates

• C++ function templates
• C++ class templates

Prolog

• Prolog derivations at Prolog tutorial
• Another prolog tutorial