Chapter 1.

4 Pages 10-11

What should we look for in a language?

A programming language is the programmers most important tool. A good

language can lead the programmer to the correct solution of a problem in a natural
and easy manner. Conversely, a poor language may add so much complexity to
finding the solution that the programmer will abandon the attempt at solving the
problem in favor of an easier one. A programming language thus serves a
programmer in the same way that a notation serves a mathematician. As said in
[Whitehead 1911]:

By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to
concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental
power of the race. Before the introduction of the Arabic notation,
multiplication was difficult, and the division even of integers called into play
the highest mathematical faculties. Probably nothing in the modern world
would have astonished a Greek mathematician than to learn that a large
proportion of the population of Western Europe could perform the operation
of division for the largest numbers. This fact would have seemed to him a
sheer impossibility. Our modern power of easy reckoning with decimal
fractions is the almost miraculous result of the gradual discovery of a perfect
notation.

The primary purpose of a programming language is to help in the task of

programming. Thus, it must aid in those areas that are the most difficult:

Program design: deciding and specifying what must be done and how the
data are to be represented
Understanding: explaining the working of the program to a human reader
Verification: establishing the correctness of the program

Chapter 14.1 The forms of complexity

There are many forms of complexity takes in a language. All too frequently, a

Marcotty, M., Ledgard, H. (1986)., The World of Programming Languages. Chicago,

IL: Science Research Associates, Inc.