Re: language design references wanted

In article 91-08-138 grosen@mhd1.moorhead.msus.edu (Johannes Grosen) writes:
>Thanks very much to all who responded to my request for references on the
>"black art" of language design. ...


I'm surprised that no one mentioned


Programming Language Landscape: Syntax, Semantics & Implementation
by Michael Marcotty and Henry Ledgard
2nd ed., Science Research Associates, 1986.


This book is all about language design, and even includes a 20 page
bibliography. It basically talks about how you can design different
language features, with examples from various languages. It is biased
toward the common imperative languages, but it mentions (from the table of
contents): Pascal, Ada, Algol 68, Smalltalk, C, Fortran, PL/I, Cobol, APL,
Lisp, Val, Concurrent Pascal, Modula-2.


Also, in response to some other poster who recommended against designing a
new language: although I would agree that the chances are that any
language you develop would never be used, I still think it is a fun and
educational exercise to develop a new language. So as long as you are
doing it for fun and not for money, I say go for it. I started to develop
a new language a couple years ago, and found it to be a rather interesting
and beneficial experience; unfortunately I've since become busy with other
stuff and have never finalized the language, but maybe someday....


--mike
--

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