- Ada (1979) :
Ada, a very powerful, complex language, was developed
by the Department of Defense for general purpose
programming. Its sophisticated control structures and data
structures also make it ideal for embedded applications
(e.g. weapons systems) and real-time applications.
Ada 95 is a superset of Ada that incorporates OOP
features.
- C (1974)and
C++: C, developed for writing system software, is a
"mid-level language" in that it has AL features and is more
machine-oriented than HLL. Thus it can run faster than
typical HLL and is an alternative to hard-to-develop,
CPU-specific assembly languages. It was very popular
with professional software developers, but has now been
virtually replaced by C++, an extension of the language that
provides OOP facilities, thus producing a "hybrid language".
Both C and C++ code can be very cryptic and hard to
understand.
- Logo (1968,
1976): Logo was developed at MIT, as a "user-friendly
version of LISP, to facilitate learning math concepts.
It has become the language of choice for introducing
programming, via "turtle graphics", to elementary school
children. However its huge success at this has led to its
underestimation as a language for other applications; in
fact, many believed it is the most underrated of all
programming languages. It is billed as a "complete
learning environment" where exploration is the
guiding principle.
- PROLOG (1970):
Based firmly on the principles of logic, it
rivals LISP as the language of choice for AI programming.
It has been chosen as the basic language for the "Fifth
Generation of Computers" being built by the Japanese.
-
HyperTalk(1987): Hypertalkis a VHLL contained within "Hypercard",
Apple's object oriented programming environment that is
called " a soft-ware erector set for non programmers" .
Hypertalk is Apple's implementation of Hypermedia, a
VHLL language concept for handling information in all forms
(data, text, graphics, animation, audio, and video). It is
billed as the "language for the rest of us" in that
it can be used by nonprogrammers to unleash the power of the
computer.
- Smalltalk
(1974-1980): Smalltalk was the first purely
object-oriented programming (OOP) language; it
extends the ideas of structured programming to more human
oriented viewpoints involving objects which
respond to messages sent to them by the computer
system under the direction of the user. Many say that
Smalltalk is the prototype of the programming paradigm of
the future, OOP.
- Java
(1991-today): Java is a purely OO, procedural, HLL
designed to facilitate reliable, platform-independent,
distributed processing. It has become "the" development
language for Internet and intranet applications because Java
"applets" (special programs) can be called directly from
HTML.
- Java is the
heart of the revolutionary NC (network computer).
- The
reliability goal means it was designed to be secure
(hacker resistant) and robust (bug
resistant); its platform-independence means it is
independent of the CPU and OS on which it is used.
- JavaScript
is VHLL that is a simplified version of Java specifically
designed to add dynamic quality to Web pages; see HTML,
below.
- Hypertext Markup
Language (HTML) is the VHLL used to create Web
pages. It is really only a collection of tags which,
when incerted into regular text, tell a Web browser how to:
- format text,
- incert an
image, video clip, or sound into a Web page,
- link to
another location in the page or another Web page, even
on another computer (server) or
- link to other
programs written in VRML, TVML, Java, JavaScript, or
other languages.
Object
oriented programming languages allows software developers to
construct programs as if they are collections of self-contained
"components". The fundamental component is the class
which is a template from which actual objects can be created
(called "instantiation"). The class (and consequently any
object instantiated from it) are completely defined by the
attributes that define its state and methods that
define its behaviour. For a discussion of OOP see
section 4 of the Software Development learning module.
Smalltalk was the first purely object-oriented language,
but object-oriented extensions have been added to many
existing languages resulting in "hybrid" languages such as C++,
Object Pascal, Ada 95, CLOS (object oriented Lisp), Object Logo,
Prolog++, etc. (Some of these are briefly described in the
following section.) Java, the fastest growing language in
popularity (particularly for distributed systems like the
Internet) is a purely object oriented programming language based
on Smalltalk but with a syntax similar to C++. (See
below.)
Lisp-Stat
Information
Luke Tierney
School of
Statistics
University of
Minnesota
Lisp-Stat [4]
is an extensible statistical computing environment for data
analysis, statistical instruction and research, with an emphasis
on providing a framework for exploring the use of dynamic
graphical methods. Extensibility is achieved by basing
Lisp-Stat on the
Lisp language, in particular on a
subset of Common Lisp.
Lisp-Stat extends standard
Lisp arithmetic operations to
perform element-wise operations on lists and vectors, and adds a
variety of basic statistical and linear algebra functions. A
portable window system interface forms the basis of a dynamic
graphics system that is designed to work identically in a number
of different graphical user interface environments, such as the
Macintosh operating system, the X window system, and
Microsoft Windows. A prototype-based object-oriented programming
system is used to implement the graphics system and to allow it
to be customized and adapted. The object-oriented programming
system is also used as the basis for statistical model
representations, such as linear and nonlinear regression models
and generalized linear models [4,5].
Many aspects of the system design were motivated by the S
language [1].
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