Final Project

For your final project, choose a programming language (approved by the instructor) and learn to use it. Work from manuals and/or web pages. Write an 8-10 page paper explaining the language. Your paper should address the issues below (probably not in that order). This should be an expository essay, not just a bulleted list of short answers!

• Is the language functional, object-oriented, imperative, logical, or something else?
• Is the language normally interpreted or compiled?
• Recommend a good, free interpreter or compiler for the language and describe your experience installing it.
• What is the BNF grammar for the language? (If this runs more than a page or so, provide a URL for an on-line grammar instead.)
• Who invented the language and when?
• Is the language statically-typed?
• Are built-in operators usually prefix, infix, or postfix? What about user-defined functions?
• What are functions called in this language? (Scheme calls them procedures, Java calls them methods, Forth calls them words.)
• Is parameter passing call-by-reference, call-by-value, call-by-name, call-by-need, or can the programmer choose from among these?
• Illustrate several simple programs in the language.
• Write one nontrivial program in the language. The Scheme interpreter in chapter 10 of The Little Schemer counts as nontrivial. You may choose a different program with the instructor's approval.
• What are the most common uses of the language?
• Find and explain a joke that only makes sense to users of the language.
• What is the convention for identifiers in the language? (Scheme hyphenates-identifiers, java capitalizesEachWordAfterTheFirst, and C either separates_words_with_underbars or uses really shrtvrblnms.)
• Explain two unusual features or clever tricks used in the language. (For example, map and apply are unusual features of Scheme, #define is an unusual feature of C, and Iterators are an unusual feature of Java.)