programming language design

I teach a course "Design, use & implementation or programming languages".
This is mainly about language design and the tradeoffs with ease of use &
ease of implementation. It also involves parsing, using packages like lex
and yacc.


I would like to use some of the discussions from comp.compilers as backup
material, or even as examples in lectures or practicals. As a sample, I
have put together most of a discussion from spring/summer '95 about
scripting languages v. programming languages, that eventually went on to
discuss statement terminators & separators, indentation to show block
structure, programming environments, and workplace practice.


I have lightly edited the messages to make them more readable and relevant
to my needs (e.g. removing what seemed to be irrelevant or personal asides,
and adding explanations). I hope this is fair use, and that no-one is
offended by what I have done - if I have transgressed, please let me know &
I will change it.
a) am I making fair use of the group effort, and of the efforts of
the moderator, of comp.compilers?
b) am I treating the individual messages/writers fairly?
If this is acceptable, I intend to collate some other discussions about
language design and parsing in a similar way.


I hope the readers of comp.compilers find the end result interesting, and
maybe even worth adding to the FAQ. If this stimulates any further discussion
or comments, I will be happy to add it to the thread.
(There are several messages from late summer that I have not added yet, and I
know I missed some earlier messages because there are gaps in the discussion.)


The sample discussion is at
                http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~pjj/cs2112/langdes/index.html


If anyone is interested, more information about the course is at
                http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~pjj/cs2112/index.html
If anyone is doing anything similar, I will be very interested to hear about
it & discuss it with them.
[As far as I'm concerned, anyone can do anything with comp.compilers
messages that they want. -John]
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