Getting the languages for a programming languages course
Rajeev Pandey · ACM SIGCSE Bulletin · 1990
To obtain a good understanding of the course material in CS 8, Organization of Computer Languages, th e recommendation in Curriculum '78 is that "programming exercises in each language should be assigned t o emphasize the implementations of language features " .While teaching the course, however, it i s sometimes difficult to allow the students to get laboratory experience with a language due to the absenc e of a compiler or interpreter .Industrial-strength compilers and interpreters also carry industrial-strengt h costs, and the cost is hard to justify for use in just one course of the curriculum .Fortunately, there is a sufficient number of language compilers and interpreters in the public domain to allow student exposure t o the different paradigms .My attempt here is to summarize where one can obtain various languages usefu l for a Programming Languages course .Most of the languages here can be obtained using the Internet and ftp, but where at all possible (an d with permission of the authors of the language), a mailing address is provided for use by institutions withou t network access .Ordering these languages through the mail will incur a small material and mailing charge .This list is neither complete nor comprehensive, but is reflective of the different language paradigms covere d in the current texts .In the case of each language, however, a site for getting the definitive and most curren t sources is listed .The next section gives a brief overview of the Programming Languages course here at Oregon State, wit h emphasis on describing how the various languages are used laboratory assignments .In the four sections following that, brief descriptions of the languages are given with details on how to obtain them .As mos t texts give detailed examples in these languages, we do not .Of the languages described, however, ISETL is not commonly described in current texts, so some examples in ISETI, are provided .