Selecting the “right” programming language
Alan L. Tharp · 1982
With the d i v e r s i t y of high-level programming languages available, selecting the " r i g h t " one for a computer science curriculum or course can be a befuddling process.For a multitude of reasons, such as the manner in which students approach problems to the u t i l i z a t i o n of scarce computing resources, the ramifications of a decision on the choice of a programming language are s i g n i f i c a n t throughout a computer science curriculum.The purpose of this paper is to provide information relevant to the selection process.Particular attention is given to COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal, PL-I, and Snobol; both q u a l i t a t i v e and quantitative factors are considered.The quantitative results were obtained from processing a binary tree insertion and r e t r i e v a l algorithm in each language.The machine resources used for this algorithm are given for both interpreter and compiler versions of translators for each language.