CMPSC 461 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Common Lisp, In C, Symbol Table
Document Summary
We"ve learned better ways of doing things over time. Diverse ideas of what is pleasant to use. Easy to express things and used once fluent. Can be widely spread at a minimal cost. Makes it easier for you to learn new languages. Some languages are similar and are easy to walk down the family tree: concepts have similarity in terms of iteration and recursion. Helps you make better use of whatever language you use: understands obscure features: Lack of suitable control structures in fortran: use comments and programmer discipline for control structures, use of variables that are initialized once, then never changed. Lack of named constants and enumerations in fortran. Focuses on what the computer wants to do. Focuses on how the computer should do it. Compiler: translates from a high-level language to assembly language or machine language. Cons: not cross platform, requires extra compiling step in the development stage. Developers have developed techniques to speed up the interpretation process.
