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On the design of a special‐purpose scientific programming language
Author(s) -
Knight John C.,
Dunlop Douglas D.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.4380131003
Subject(s) - fortran , computer science , programming language , high level programming language , c programming language , computation , fourth generation programming language , software engineering , programming paradigm , inductive programming , functional logic programming , software
Abstract Observations on the design of the special‐purpose scientific programming language SL/1 are presented. SL/1 is intended for applications programming of the Control Data Corporation Cyber 203, a very high‐performance vector processor, which is mainly used for scientific computation. The language design has been heavily influenced by the hardware characteristics of this machine and the needs of the Cyber 203 user community. Various aspects of the design of SL/1 are discussed and measurements of their use are presented. In addition, unexpected similarities between the resulting design of SL/1 and the design of FORTRAN are examined and several reasons for the continued widespread use of FORTRAN are suggested.