9

Programm
Languages
ing
9.1
Foundations of Computer Science © Cengage
Learning
 Objectives
After studying this chapter, the student should be able to:
❑ Describe the evolution of programming languages from
machine language to high-level languages.
❑ Understand how a program in a high-level language is
translated into machine language.
❑ Distinguish between four computer language
paradigms.
❑ Understand the procedural paradigm and the
interaction between a program unit and data items in
the paradigm.
❑ Understand the object-oriented paradigm and the
interaction between a program unit and objects in this
paradigm.
❑ Define functional paradigm and understand its applications.

❑ Define a declaration paradigm and understand its applications.

9.2
❑ Define common concepts in procedural and object-
 9-1 EVOLUTION

To write a program for a computer, we must use a

computer language. A computer language is a set of
predefined words that are combined into a program
according to predefined rules (syntax). Over the years,
computer languages have evolved from machine
language to high-level languages.

9.3
Machine languages
In the earliest days of computers, the only programming
languages available were machine languages. Each
computer had its own machine language, which was made of
streams of 0s and 1s. In Chapter 5 we showed that in a
primitive hypothetical computer, we need to use eleven lines
of code to read two integers, add them and print the result.
These lines of code, when written in machine language,
make eleven lines of binary code, each of 16 bits, as shown
in Table 9.1.

i
The only language understood by a computer is
machine language.
9.4
9.5
Assembly languages
The next evolution in programming came with the idea of
replacing binary code for instruction and addresses with
symbols or mnemonics. Because they used symbols, these
languages were first known as symbolic languages. The set
of these mnemonic languages were later referred to as
assembly languages. The assembly language for our
hypothetical computer to replace the machine language in
Table 9.2 is shown in Program 9.1.

i
The only language understood by a computer is
machine language.
9.6
9.7
High-level languages
Although assembly languages greatly improved
programming efficiency, they still required programmers to
concentrate on the hardware they were using. Working with
symbolic languages was also very tedious, because each
machine instruction had to be individually coded. The desire
to improve programmer efficiency and to change the focus
from the computer to the problem being solved led to the
development of high-level languages.

Over the years, various languages, most notably

BASIC, COBOL, Pascal, Ada, C, C++ and Java, were
developed. Program 9.1 shows the code for adding two
integers as it would appear in the C++ language.
9.8
9.9
 9-2 TRANSLATION

Programs today are normally written in one of the high-

level languages. To run the program on a computer, the
program needs to be translated into the machine
language of the computer on which it will run. The
program in a high-level language is called the source
program. The translated program in machine language is
called the object program. Two methods are used for
translation: compilation and interpretation.

9.10
Compilation
A compiler normally translates the whole source
program
into the object program.

Interpretation
Some computer languages use an interpreter to translate the
source program into the object program. Interpretation refers
to the process of translating each line of the source program
into the corresponding line of the object program and
executing the line. However, we need to be aware of two
trends in interpretation: that used by some languages before
Java and the interpretation used by Java.
9.11
Translation process
Compilation and interpretation differ in that the first
translates the whole source code before executing it, while
the second translates and executes the source code a line at a
time. Both methods, however, follow the same translation
process shown in Figure 9.1.

Figure 9.1 Source code translation

process
9.12
 9-3 PROGRAMMING PARADIGMS

Today, computer languages are categorized according to

the approach they use to solve a problem. A paradigm,
therefore, is a way in which a computer language looks
at the problem to be solved. We divide computer
languages into four procedural, object-
paradigms: declarative. Figure
summarizes
oriented, these.
functional and 9.2

9.13
 Figure 9.2 Categories of programming
languages
9.14
The procedural paradigm
In the procedural paradigm (or imperative paradigm) we can
think of a program as an active agent that manipulates
passive objects. We encounter many passive objects in our
daily life: a stone, a book, a lamp, and so on. A passive
object cannot initiate an action by itself, but it can receive
actions from active agents.
A program in a procedural paradigm is an active agent
that uses passive objects that we refer to as data or data
items. To manipulate a piece of data, the active agent
(program) issues an action, referred to as a procedure. For
example, think of a program that prints the contents of a file.
The file is a passive object. To print the file, the program
uses a procedure, which we call print.

9.15
 Figure 9.3 The concept of the procedural
paradigm
9.16
 A program in this paradigm is made up of three parts: a part
for object creation, a set of procedure calls and a set of code
for each procedure. Some procedures have already been
defined in the language itself. By combining this code, the
programmer can create new procedures.

9.17
Figure 9.4 The components of a procedural
program
 Some procedural languages

❑ FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation)

❑ COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language)

❑ Pascal

❑C

❑ Ada

9.18
The object-oriented paradigm
The object-oriented paradigm deals with active objects
instead of passive objects. We encounter many active objects
in our daily life: a vehicle, an automatic door, a dishwasher
and so on. The action to be performed on these objects are
included in the object: the objects need only to receive the
appropriate stimulus from outside to perform one of the
actions.
A file in an object-oriented paradigm can be packed
with all the procedures—called methods in the object-
oriented paradigm—to be performed by the file: printing,
copying, deleting and so on. The program in this paradigm
just sends the corresponding request to the object.

9.19
 Figure 9.5 The concept of an object-oriented
paradigm
9.20
Classes
As Figure 9.5 shows, objects of the
same type (files, for example) need a set of methods
this show
that type how
reacts to stimuli
an object of from outside the object’s
“territories”. To create these methods, a unit called a class is
used (see Appendix F).

Figure 9.6 The concept of an object-oriented

9.21 paradigm
Methods
In general, the format of methods are very similar to the
functions used in some procedural languages. Each method
has its header, its local variables and its statement. This
means that most of the features we discussed for procedural
languages are also applied to methods written for an object-
oriented program. In other words, we can claim that object-
oriented languages are actually an extension of procedural
languages with some new ideas and some new features. The
C++ language, for example, is an object-oriented extension
of the C language.

9.22
Inheritance
In the object-oriented paradigm, as in nature, an object can
inherit from another object. This concept is called
inheritance. When a general class is defined, we can define a
more specific class that inherits some of the characteristics of
the general class, but also has some new characteristics. For
example, when an object of the type GeometricalShapes is
defined, we can define a class called Rectangles. Rectangles
are geometrical shapes with additional characteristics.

9.23
Polymorphism
Polymorphism means “many forms”. Polymorphism in the
object-oriented paradigm means that we can define several
operations with the same name that can do different things in
related classes. For example, assume that we define two
classes, Rectangles and Circles, both inherited from the class
GeometricalShapes. We define two operations both named
area, one in Rectangles and one in Circles, that calculate the
area of a rectangle or a circle. The two operations have the
same name

9.24
 Some object-oriented languages
❑ C++

❑ Java

9.25
The functional paradigm
In the functional paradigm a program is considered a
mathematical function. In this context, a function is a black
box that maps a list of inputs to a list of outputs.

Figure 9.7 A function in a functional

9.26 language
 For example, we can define a primitive function called first
that extracts the first element of a list. It may also have a
function called rest that extracts all the elements except the
first. A program can define a function that extracts the third
element of a list by combining these two functions as shown
in Figure 9.8.

Figure 9.8 Extracting the third element of a

9.27 list
 Some functional languages
❑ LISP (LISt Programming)

❑ Scheme

9.28
The declarative paradigm
A declarative paradigm uses the principle
of logical reasoning to answer queries.
It is based on formal logic
defined by Greek mathematicians and later developed into
first-order predicate calculus.
Logical reasoning is based on deduction. Some
statements (facts) are given that are assumed to be true, and
the logician uses solid rules of logical reasoning to deduce
new statements (facts). For example, the famous rule of
deduction in logic is:

9.29
 Using this rule and the two following facts,

we can deduce a new fact:

9.30
 Prolog
One of the famous declarative languages is Prolog
(PROgramming in LOGic), developed by A. Colmerauer in
France in 1972. A program in Prolog is made up of facts and
rules. For example, the previous facts about human beings
can be stated as:

The user can then ask:

and the program will respond with yes.

9.31
 9-4 COMMON CONCEPTS

In this section we conduct a quick navigation through

some procedural languages to find common concepts.
Some of these concepts are also available in most
object-oriented languages because, as we explained, an
object-oriented paradigm uses the procedural paradigm
when creating methods.

9.32
Identifiers
One feature present in all procedural languages, as well as in
other languages, is the identifier—that is, the name of
objects. Identifiers allow us to name objects in the program.
For example, each piece of data in a computer is stored at a
unique address. If there were no identifiers to represent data
locations symbolically, we would have to know and use data
addresses to manipulate them. Instead, we simply give data
names and let the compiler keep track of where they are
physically located.

9.33
Data types
A data type defines a set of values and a set of operations
that can be applied to those values. The set of values for each
type is known as the domain for the type. Most languages
define two categories of data types: simple types and
composite types.

A simple type is a data type that cannot be broken into

smaller data types.

A composite type is a set of elements

in which each element is a simple type or a
composite type.

9.34
Variables
Variables are names for memory locations. As discussed in
Chapter 5, each memory location in a computer has an
address. Although the addresses are used by the computer
internally, it is very inconvenient for the programmer to use
addresses. A programmer can use a variable, such as score,
to store the integer value of a score received in a test. Since a
variable holds a data item, it has a type.

9.35
Literals
A literal is a predetermined value used in a program. For
example, if we need to calculate the area of circle when the
value of the radius is stored in the variable r, we can use the
expression 3.14 × r2, in which the approximate value of π
(pi) is used as a literal. In most programming languages we
can have integer, real, character and Boolean literals. In most
languages, we can also have string literals. To distinguish
the character and string literals from the names of variables
and other objects, most languages require that the character
literals be enclosed in single quotes, such as 'A', and strings
to be enclosed in double quotes, such as "Anne".

9.36
Constants
The use of literals is not considered good programming
practice unless we are sure that the value of the literal will
not change with time (such as the value of π in geometry).
However, most literals may change value with time.

For this reason, most programming languages define

constants. A constant, like a variable, is a named location
that can store a value, but the value cannot be changed after
it has been defined at the beginning of the program.
However, if we want to use the program later, we can change
just one line at the beginning of the program, the value of
the constant.

9.37
Inputs and Outputs
Almost every program needs to read and/or write data. These
operations can be quite complex, especially when we read
and write large files. Most programming languages use a
predefined function for input and output.

Data is input by either a statement or

a predefined function such as scanf in the C
language.

Data is outputby either a statement or

a predefined function such as printf in the C
language.

9.38
Expressions
An expression is a sequence of operands and operators that
reduces to a single value. For example, the following is an
expression with a value of 13:

An operator is a language-specific token that requires

an action to be taken. The most familiar operators are drawn
from mathematics.

9.39
 Table 9.3 shows some arithmetic operators used in C, C++,
and Java.

9.40
 Relational operators compare data to see if a value is greater
than, less than, or equal to another value. The result of
applying relational operators is a Boolean value (true or
false). C, C++ and Java use six relational operators, as
shown in Table 9.4:

9.41
 Logical operators combine Boolean values (true or false) to
get a new value. The C language uses three logical operators,
as shown in Table 9.5:

9.42
Statements
A statement causes an action to be performed by the
program. It translates directly into one or more executable
computer instructions. For example, C, C++ and Java define
many types of statements.

An assignment statement assigns a value to a variable. In

other words, it stores the value in the variable, which has
already been created in the declaration section.

A compound statement is a unit of code consisting of zero

or more statements. It is also known as a block. A compound
statement allows a group of statements to be treated as a
single entity.
9.43
 Structured programming strongly recommends the use of the
three types of control statements: sequence, selection and
repetition, as we discussed in Chapter 8.

Figure 9.9 Two-way and multi-way

9.44
decisions
 Figure 9.10 Three types of
9.45
repetition