Nim (programming language)Nim is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm, statically typed, compiled high-level systems programming language, designed and developed by a team around Andreas Rumpf. Nim is designed to be "efficient, expressive, and elegant", supporting metaprogramming, functional, message passing, procedural, and object-oriented programming styles by providing several features such as compile time code generation, algebraic data types, a foreign function interface (FFI) with C, C++, Objective-C, and JavaScript, and supporting compiling to those same languages as intermediate representations.
Purely functional programmingIn computer science, purely functional programming usually designates a programming paradigm—a style of building the structure and elements of computer programs—that treats all computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions. Program state and mutable objects are usually modeled with temporal logic, as explicit variables that represent the program state at each step of a program execution: a variable state is passed as an input parameter of a state-transforming function, which returns the updated state as part of its return value.
Expression-oriented programming languageAn expression-oriented programming language is a programming language in which every (or nearly every) construction is an expression and thus yields a value. The typical exceptions are macro definitions, preprocessor commands, and declarations, which expression-oriented languages often treat as statements. Lisp and ALGOL 68 are expression-oriented languages. Pascal is not an expression-oriented language. All functional programming languages are expression-oriented.
General-purpose programming languageIn computer software, a general-purpose programming language (GPL) is a programming language for building software in a wide variety of application domains. Conversely, a domain-specific programming language (DSL) is used within a specific area. For example, Python is a GPL, while SQL is a DSL for querying relational databases. Early programming languages were designed for scientific computing (numerical calculations) or commercial data processing, as was computer hardware.
Record (computer science)In computer science, a record (also called a structure, struct, or compound data) is a basic data structure. Records in a database or spreadsheet are usually called "rows". A record is a collection of fields, possibly of different data types, typically in a fixed number and sequence. The fields of a record may also be called members, particularly in object-oriented programming; fields may also be called elements, though this risks confusion with the elements of a collection.
NemerleNemerle is a general-purpose, high-level, statically typed programming language designed for platforms using the Common Language Infrastructure (.NET/Mono). It offers functional, object-oriented, aspect-oriented, reflective and imperative features. It has a simple C#-like syntax and a powerful metaprogramming system. In June 2012, the core developers of Nemerle were hired by the Czech software development company JetBrains. The team was focusing on developing Nitra, a framework to implement extant and new programming languages.
BytecodeBytecode (also called portable code or p-code) is a form of instruction set designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter. Unlike human-readable source code, bytecodes are compact numeric codes, constants, and references (normally numeric addresses) that encode the result of compiler parsing and performing semantic analysis of things like type, scope, and nesting depths of program objects. The name bytecode stems from instruction sets that have one-byte opcodes followed by optional parameters.
Programming language theoryProgramming language theory (PLT) is a branch of computer science that deals with the design, implementation, analysis, characterization, and classification of formal languages known as programming languages. Programming language theory is closely related to other fields including mathematics, software engineering, and linguistics. There are a number of academic conferences and journals in the area. History of programming languages and Programming language#History In some ways, the history of programming language theory predates even the development of programming languages themselves.
First-generation programming languageA first-generation programming language (1GL) is a machine-level programming language. A first generation (programming) language (1GL) is a grouping of programming languages that are machine level languages used to program first-generation computers. Originally, no translator was used to compile or assemble the first-generation language. The first-generation programming instructions were entered through the front panel switches of the computer system. The instructions in 1GL are made of binary numbers, represented by 1s and 0s.
Comparison of programming languagesProgramming languages are used for controlling the behavior of a machine (often a computer). Like natural languages, programming languages follow rules for syntax and semantics. There are thousands of programming languages and new ones are created every year. Few languages ever become sufficiently popular that they are used by more than a few people, but professional programmers may use dozens of languages in a career. Most programming languages are not standardized by an international (or national) standard, even widely used ones, such as Perl or Standard ML (despite the name).
Type theoryIn mathematics, logic, and computer science, a type theory is the formal presentation of a specific type system, and in general, type theory is the academic study of type systems. Some type theories serve as alternatives to set theory as a foundation of mathematics. Two influential type theories that were proposed as foundations are Alonzo Church's typed λ-calculus and Per Martin-Löf's intuitionistic type theory. Most computerized proof-writing systems use a type theory for their foundation, a common one is Thierry Coquand's Calculus of Inductive Constructions.
Template metaprogrammingTemplate metaprogramming (TMP) is a metaprogramming technique in which templates are used by a compiler to generate temporary source code, which is merged by the compiler with the rest of the source code and then compiled. The output of these templates can include compile-time constants, data structures, and complete functions. The use of templates can be thought of as compile-time polymorphism. The technique is used by a number of languages, the best-known being C++, but also Curl, D, Nim, and XL.
