System programming language - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

System programming languages are programming language

Programming language

A programming language is an artificial language designed to communicate instructions to a machine, particularly a computer. Programming languages can be used to create programs that control the behavior of a machine and/or to express algorithms precisely....

s that are statically typed, allow arbitrarily complex data structure

Data structure

In computer science, a data structure is a particular way of storing and organizing data in a computer so that it can be used efficiently.Different kinds of data structures are suited to different kinds of applications, and some are highly specialized to specific tasks...

s, are compiled

Compiled language

A compiled language is a programming language whose implementations are typically compilers , and not interpreters ....

, and are meant to operate largely independently of other programs. Prototypical system programming languages are C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

and Modula-2

Modula-2

Modula-2 is a computer programming language designed and developed between 1977 and 1980 by Niklaus Wirth at ETH Zurich as a revision of Pascal to serve as the sole programming language for the operating system and application software for the personal workstation Lilith...

. This term derives from John Ousterhout

John Ousterhout

John Kenneth Ousterhout is the chairman of Electric Cloud, Inc. and a professor of computer science at Stanford University. He founded Electric Cloud with John Graham-Cumming. Ousterhout previously was a professor of computer science at University of California, Berkeley where he created the Tcl...

's division of high-level languages into "system programming languages" and "scripting languages". This distinction is sometimes referred to as Ousterhout's dichotomy

Ousterhout's dichotomy

Ousterhout's dichotomy is computer scientist John Ousterhout's claim that high-level programming languages tend to fall into two groups, each with distinct properties and uses: "system programming languages" and "scripting languages"...

; it underlies the design of his language Tcl

Tcl

Tcl is a scripting language created by John Ousterhout. Originally "born out of frustration", according to the author, with programmers devising their own languages intended to be embedded into applications, Tcl gained acceptance on its own...

.

By contrast, scripting languages (or "glue languages") are dynamically typed or untyped, and programs written in them (known as scripts) are interpreted

Interpreter (computing)

In computer science, an interpreter normally means a computer program that executes, i.e. performs, instructions written in a programming language...

or sometimes byte-compiled

Bytecode

Bytecode, also known as p-code , is a term which has been used to denote various forms of instruction sets designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter as well as being suitable for further compilation into machine code...

. Scripts need to interact either with other programs (often as glue) or with a set of functions provided by the interpreter, as with the file system

File system

A file system is a means to organize data expected to be retained after a program terminates by providing procedures to store, retrieve and update data, as well as manage the available space on the device which contain it. A file system organizes data in an efficient manner and is tuned to the...

functions provided in a Unix shell

Unix shell

A Unix shell is a command-line interpreter or shell that provides a traditional user interface for the Unix operating system and for Unix-like systems...

and with Tcl's GUI

Gui

Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...

functions. Prototypical scripting languages are AppleScript

AppleScript

AppleScript is a scripting language created by Apple Inc. and built into Macintosh operating systems since System 7. The term "AppleScript" may refer to the scripting system itself, or to particular scripts that are written in the AppleScript language....

, C Shell

C shell

The C shell is a Unix shell that was created by Bill Joy while a graduate student at University of California, Berkeley in the late 1970s. It has been distributed widely, beginning with the 2BSD release of the BSD Unix system that Joy began distributing in 1978...

, DOS

DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...

batch files, and Tcl.

Many believe that this is a highly arbitrary dichotomy

Dichotomy

A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts...

, and refer to it as "Ousterhout's fallacy" or "Ousterhout's false dichotomy". While static-versus-dynamic typing, data structure complexity, and independent versus stand-alone might be said to be unrelated features, the usual critique of Ousterhout's dichotomy is of its distinction between compiling versus interpreting, since neither semantics

Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning. It focuses on the relation between signifiers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for, their denotata....

nor syntax

Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....

depend significantly on whether code is compiled into machine language, interpreted, tokenized, or byte-compiled

Bytecode

at the start of each run, or any mix of these. Many languages may be either interpreted or compiled, depending on dialect and implementation (e.g. Lisp

Lisp programming language

Lisp is a family of computer programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized syntax. Originally specified in 1958, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level programming language in widespread use today; only Fortran is older...

, Forth, UCSD Pascal, and Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

). This makes compiling versus interpreting a dubious parameter in a taxonomy of programming languages.

The term system programming language is also (and perhaps more widely) used to mean "a language for system programming

System programming

System programming is the activity of programming system software. The primary distinguishing characteristic of systems programming when compared to application programming is that application programming aims to produce software which provides services to the user System programming (or systems...

": that is, a language designed for writing system software

System software

System software is computer software designed to operate the computer hardware and to provide a platform for running application software.The most basic types of system software are:...

as distinct from application software

Application software

Application software, also known as an application or an "app", is computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks. Examples include enterprise software, accounting software, office suites, graphics software and media players. Many application programs deal principally with...

. In contrast with application languages, such system programming languages typically offer more direct access to the physical hardware of the machine: an archetypical system programming language in this sense was BCPL

BCPL

BCPL is a procedural, imperative, and structured computer programming language designed by Martin Richards of the University of Cambridge in 1966.- Design :...

. The distinction between languages for system programming and applications programming became blurred with widespread popularity of C

C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language developed between 1969 and 1973 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system....

and Pascal

Pascal (programming language)

Pascal is an influential imperative and procedural programming language, designed in 1968/9 and published in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a small and efficient language intended to encourage good programming practices using structured programming and data structuring.A derivative known as Object Pascal...

.

System Programming Language or SPL is also the name of a specific language on the HP 3000

HP 3000

The HP 3000 series is a family of minicomputers released by Hewlett-Packard in 1973. It was designed to be the first minicomputer delivered with a full featured operating system with time-sharing. The first models were withdrawn from the market until speed improvements could be made. It ultimately...

computer series used for its operating system HP Multi-Programming Executive and other systems software.

See also