CSCI 431 Project Description

Group and language assignments todate

• Vance Bell has requested javascript
• Brent Briggs, Keefer Hamrick, Joseph Crawley, Lizette Gonzalez and Mike French have requested Tcl/Tk
• Roger Batsel and Melissa Boring have requested REXX
• Richard Preston and Terrance Rayner have requested Perl
• Jeremy Gustrowsky has requested Python
• David Dudman has requested VBScript
• Thomas Ryan has requested CGI Scripting

Overview

Everybody is required to participate in a class presentation, either individually or as part of a group. Each presentation will describe a scripting language of your choice. Although not a formal part of the material to be covered in this course, there's been a great deal of attention given to scripting languages recently. This is evidenced not only by the increasing popularity of more established scripting languages such as Perl and Tcl, but also by the large number of new scripting languages (e.g., javascript, VBscript, CobraScript, etc). Surprisingly, given this state of affairs, it is very difficult to say exactly what a scripting language is, that is, what distinguishes a "scripting" language from a "regular" programming. Although it might not be possible to establish rigid guidelines, it does appear that most scripting languages have the following three properties:

• They are either hybrid or fully interpreted languages
• They are "type-less" or dynamically typed
• They are like command languages in that the main effect of a program (written in a scripting language) is to drive another system, while in a programming language the program itself is the main action.

Requirements

Your assignment is to give a brief presentation of a scripting language to the class on Nov 23. All presentations will be on that day and the exact time allotted for each presentations will depend on the number of groups. Your presentation materials must be suitable for inclusion of the course page (i.e., there must be an electronic version of your presentation that can be displayed with an existing application program). Your grade will be based on the quality of your presentation, and the number of people in the group will be taken into consideration.

You are free to chose any of the more widely known scripting languages. The Yahoo Programming Languages Page lists six scripting languages (under the heading "scripting languages") not including javascript which is listed separately. You can easily find other scripting languages by doing a web search and including the phrase "scripting language".

Your presentation should include the following kinds of information:

• A program that you have written in the language that you are presenting. This program should exhibit a number of the more interesting features of the language.
• Discussion of technical factors such as:
  • Simplicity of language constructs, which relates to ease of programming
  • Readability, which relates to maintainability, an important factor as many programs greatly outlive their expected lifetimes (witness the Y2K software crisis)
  • How tuned a language's features are for a particular application (e.g., Perl relates well to text processing)
  • Compilation speed (if relevant)
  • Runtime efficiency, in terms of speed and machine resources
  • Library support
  • Debugging help
  • Language safety
  • Longevity of language and compiler tools
  • Portability across platforms and machine architectures: Execution platforms for programs tend to change over time (e.g., from DOS to Windows to Windows NT, just to trace the ``Wintel'' lineage). Is the language closely tied to a particular machine, or is the language clearly portable (e.g., Java's clear independence of any particular machine's quirks or implementation)?
• Discussion of political factors such as:
  • Popularity of the language: Popularity, in terms of the size of the marketplace and number of programmers using a language affects the choice of a language.
  • Economic: Which language tends to be cheapest or most cost effective for a given application?
  • References and resources, particularly those that are on-line. Is the language well-supported by commercial organizations or freeware development communities (i.e., will the language's compilers and development environment be available for the foreseeable future)?