CS 342 Self study questions on general issues, design, principles

* Design
** What is the algebraic view of design?
** Take a sample program and design a simple user-interface
***	What do you look for, how to start the design?
***	Syntax
***	Semantics
***	Evaluate it according to language design principles, etc.

* Principles
** What principles relate to the following?
***     expressiveness
***     efficiency
***     aesthetics

** What are the most important principles?

** Make a chart as follows: principles on one axis,
                            vs. examples (features) from CLU, Smalltalk, Scheme

** How do the principles relate to costs and benefits?

** Draw an implication graph: which principles imply the others
	e.g., regularity implies syntactic consistency

** What are the conflicts/tradeoffs among principles?
        
* Features
** What features are the most important?

** What features are related to the folowing?
***	naming
*** 	abstraction
***	expressing security constraints
***	symbolic manipulation
***	data abstraction
***	prototyping, modification/reuse of designs and code
***	object-oriented programming
***	functional programming

* Language Paradigms (frameworks, programming styles)
**        What are the various language frameworks?

**        What framework do you prefer and why
***             for simulation?
***             for database work?
***             for numerical/scientific programming?

**        Which language paradigm has the most potential for (eventually):
***                putting programmers out of work?
***                solving problems quickly?
***                leading to code reuse?
***                helping programmers write correct code?
***                rapid prototyping?

* Run-time data structures and algorithms
        (these are data abstractions, naturally)

** List some standard built-in types and describe their implementations.

** What is an activation record?        

** How is the run-time stack organized for
***	variable addressing (display, static chaining)
***     procedure call/return, block entry/exit, non-local gotos
***     closures

** What are the relative costs of using a display vs. static chaining?

** Heap storage: what are the algorithms for and advantages of
***     garbage collection
***	reference counting