A BASE FOR THE DEFINITION OF COMPUTER LANGUAGES

The presentation investigates and describes certain promising ideas for the design of computer languages and translators. By isolating and utilizing the fundamental elements of computer languages and the fundamental mechanisms of assemblers and compilers this approach provides a very flexible and powerful base for defining languages and their translators. Throughout the approach, the user's needs are emphasized in a studied and analytical manner. The approach seeks to give the user facilities that really help him and place at his command many devices and facilities which today are available only in separate, special-purpose languages. The purpose of this approach is to achieve simplification, unification, and standardization of existing languages so they may all be built on one universal base and may all be handled by one general translator. At the same time, this universal base and its translator will encourage the orderly and rapid development of many new powerful languages tailored to special areas. These new languages would greatly reduce the programming effort required in these areas, could help solve the programming bottleneck, and could further the development of some of the really challenging applications of the digital computer. (Author)