Significance of programming language study

1. Increased capacity to express ideas-

-The depth at which we think is influenced by the expressive power of the language in which we
communicate our thoughts.
-The language in which the programmers develop software places limits on the kind of control
structures, data structures and abstractions they can use.
-Awareness of wider variety of programming language can reduce such limitations in software
development. Programmers can increase the range of their software development thought process by
learning new language constructs.
Eg. Having learned the string manipulation functions of FORTRAN, such as the substring search
function, INDEX, a Pascal programmer would naturally led to building subprograms to provide
those operations

2. Improved background for choosing appropriate languages

There are mainly 2 types of programmers with two backgrounds
Some of them might have learned programming on their own or through in house training
program
Many other programmer received their formal training in the distant past
In the first group, training programs often teach one or two language that are directly relevant to
the current work of organization.
In the second group the languages they learned then are no longer used
EG. When given a choice of language for a new project, the programmers with 2 different
backgrounds continue to use the language with which they are most familiar, even if it is poorly
suited to the new language.
3. Increased ability to learn new languages
-Software development is an existing profession but it also means that continuous learning is
essential.
-The process of learning new language can be lengthy and difficult, especially for someone who
is comfortable with only one or two languages.
-Thorough understanding of the fundamental concept of languages make far easier to see how
these concepts are incorporated into the design of the language being learned.
EG. Programmers who understand the concepts of data abstraction will have a much easier time
learning how to construct data abstraction types in JAVA than those who are not familiar with
data abstraction.
4. Better understand of significance of implementation
-An understanding of implementation issues leads to an understanding of why languages are
designed the way they are.
-This in turn leads to the ability to use a language more intelligently, as it was designed to use.
-Certain kinds of program bugs can only be found and fixed by programmer who knows some
related implementation issues.
-Another benefit is it allows us to visualize how a computer executes various language
constructs.
EG. Programmer who know better about how recursion is implemented often do not know that a
recursive algorithm is typically far slower than an equivalent iterative algorithm.
5. Increased ability to design new languages.
 -The possibility of being required at some future time to design a new programming language
may seem remote.
-However most professional programmers occasionally do design languages of one sort or the
other.
For EG.
-Most software systems require the user to interact. In DOS it may be through some commands,
a few data values entry etc.
-On the other hand in windows the user might be required to traverse several levels of menus and
enter a variety of commands in word processor.
-In such systems the user interface is a complex design problem.
A critical examination of programming languages will help in design of such complex
systems and more commonly it will help users examine and evaluate such products.

6. Overall advancement of computing

-Although it is usually possible to determine why a particular language become popular, it is not
always clear at least in retrospect, that the most popular languages are best available.
-In some cases it might be concluded, a language become widely used because those in positions
to choose languages were not sufficiently familiar with programming language concepts.
FOR EG.
FORTRAN was not replaced with ALGOL 60 in early 60’s because the s/w development
managers found it difficult to read, block structures and control structures seemed difficult. So
they failed.
In general, if those who choose language are better informed perhaps better languages would
more quickly squeeze out poorer ones.

Because of the above reasons there is the need of studying the concepts of programming
languages.