Re: language design references wanted

In article 91-08-112 grosen@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu (Johannes Grosen) writes:
>I'm a second year grad student (CS) and preparing to tackle (gasp!) my
>thesis. A number of possible topics have been suggested, many of which
>involve implementing new languages or extending/modifying existing ones. My
>question is this: there seems to be a great deal of literature on compiler
>design (i.e., implementing translators for a language) but very little on
>designing the language! Various people, including our moderator, Mr. Levine,
>have called it a 'black art'. Well, I'd like to be a 'sorcerer's
>apprentice'! I would very much appreciate hearing of any references that
>deal with how one goes about designing a language. If there are enough
>responses I will compile and post them here.


In this book:


%# LC Card Number: 79021635
%i ISBN: 0-521-22631-7
%h HP MR PY
%A McGettrick, Andrew D., 1944-
%T Definition of programming languages.
%I Cambridge Univ.
%D 1980.
%P 268p.
%d 005.13/M145d
%s Computer program languages




on page 236, Mr. McGettrick explains two basic principles of language design.
He only uses about three pages to do this. But the two principles which he
describes are:


The principle of correspondence
and The principle of abstraction


Basically what he says is "The strong similarity between the semantics of
declarations and parameters suggest that these two aspects of a language
should be designed jointly and be similar" and "it should be possible in a
well-designed programming language, to provide abstractions in the language
for any meaningful class of objects." By abstractions he means being able to
write a C function for an expression and such.
--

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