XL (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 21:52, 5 November 2005

Revision as of 14:21, 11 January 2006

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XL is defined at three different levels:

* XL0 defines how an input text is transformed into a [[parse tree]].

* XL1 defines a base language with features comparable to [[C_plus_plus|C++]]

* XL2 defines the standard library, which includes common data types and operators.

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* [[Basic]], notably in the more modern variants that dispense of line numbers and support structured programming, showed how simple the syntax of a programming language could be. For instance, Basic remains one of the only modern languages to not mandate parentheses around subroutine calls.

* [[C_language|C]] was used as the standard to expect in terms of runtime and machine-level support. XL will not require a virtual machine to run.

* [[C_plus_plus|C++]] and the [[Standard template library]] demonstrated the need for good support of generic types, including implicit instantiation of generics (which Ada lacks).

* [[Fortran]]'s continued performance lead over C and C++ for numerical-intensive applications helped identify which language constructs would prevent useful optimizations.

* [[Java programming language|Java]] demonstrated the importance of a large, portable support library. Java containers also showed the limitations of an approach not based on generic programming. Interfacing with Java code remains an interesting challenge for XL.