A Programming Languages Course at Web Speed

Short Description
Abstract - The immediate Internet availability of new developments in programming languages allows the core survey of programming languages course to illustrate language concepts with examples that bring students to the forefront of current practice. Ruby and C# each solve problems of current interest in an innovative way that will influence future languages. They are different enough to provide good contrasts and yet their commonalities may show the future direction of productive languages. We describe and provide materials for a survey of programming languages course with examples from Ruby and C#.

Website: iec.cugb.edu.cn | Filesize: 90kb
No of Page(s): 5

Content
…Why Ruby and C#
Java and C++ are the two main languages taught today in the CS I and CS II courses. Students then use these languages throughout the curriculum. The high-school advanced placement exam uses Java. In industry server-side Java has been particularly popular. In Beyond Java [1], Bruce Tate argues that Java is catering to the needs of large enterprise applications whose requirements are extremely heavy. The many developers who write applications that interact with a database via a user interface do not need the complexity of enterprise Java. They do not need to struggle with development frameworks that have become very complex.
…
Another other language that solves a real problem for developers is C#. Version 2.0 added some interesting features to the original 1.0, but the 3.0 version previewed last September at the Professional Developers Conference really shows the influence of the programming language researchers that Microsoft has hired, many from academia. The new features in C# 3.0 [10] are designed to support the creation and use of higher order, functional style class libraries. In particular C# 3.0 supports LINQ, Language Integrated Query. Databases store data in relational tables while programming languages use objects. Using a programming language to access a database causes complex conversion problems. Similarly the XML format does not match programming languages types very well. LINQ allows query of in-memory collections as well as databases and XML files with a facility and clarity not heretofore available [11].
…

Get the file Download here