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Programming Languages Research Group
Computer Science Department
University of Colorado at Boulder
Academic Year 1996/97
Programming Languages and Compilers Research Group
Faculty
William Waite
,
Ben Zorn
,
Vince Heuring
,
Dirk Grunwald
,
Wayne Citrin
.
Research Interests
Programming language research at the University of Colorado
encompasses design, translation and run-time support.
Our interests span the spectrum, including problems of visual, functional and
object-oriented languages as well as mainstream languages like C and
FORTRAN.
Our emphasis is on practical and experimental work rather than theory.
We have a number of industrial partnerships, and make many of our results
available as running software.
Specific interests of group members are
the structure and applications of visual languages (Citrin),
methods for improving the performance of object-oriented languages
(Grunwald).
and appropriate techniques to generate optimized code for standard languages
on modern computers (Grunwald, Zorn).
A long-running project is concerned with providing executable
specifications for the entire compilation process and automating the
production of the compiler from them (Waite).
Major Funded Research Projects
The main funded research projects in this area include:
- High performance environments and languages -- funded by ARPA and
carried out in cooperation with Indiana University and
the University of Oregon
- Completely visual programming languages and environments - funded
by the Colorado Advanced Software Institute (CASI) and US WEST
Technologies. See
VIPR
for more information. Investigators: Wayne Citrin and Ben Zorn.
Facilities
Experimental projects in the programming languages area depend on
considerable software infrastructure in addition to the department's
normal complement of compilers, editors and word processors.
Currently these include:
- ATOM -- A program instrumentation tool that supports detailed
measurements of program performance for both user code and
the kernel.
- The
Eli System
-- A domain-specific programming environment for translator
construction.
- Newtonscript programming environment. An object-oriented programming
environment for construction of pen-based applications - including
programming environments - on the Apple Newton Messagepad PDA.
A C++ environment for the Newton should be available soon.
Relevant publications
- R. W. Gray, V. P. Heuring, S. P. Levi, A. M. Sloane, W. M. Waite.
"Eli: A Complete, Flexible Compiler Construction System", CACM,
35 (February, 1992) 121-131.
- U. Kastens, W. M. Waite. "Modularity and Reusability in Attribute
Grammars", Acta Informatica, 31 (1994) 601-627
- Citrin, W., R. Hall, and B. Zorn, "Addressing the Scalability Problem
in Visual Programming," University of Colorado, Dept. of Computer
Science, Technical Report CU-CS-768-95, April 1995. (Copies in
Mac Word format and in
Postscript are available.)
- Citrin, W., R. Hall, and B. Zorn, "A Visual Lambda Calculus,"
University of Colorado Department of Computer Science Technical
Report CU-CS-757-94 (January 1995). (Click
here for a Mac Word version, and
here for a Postscript version)
- Citrin, W., Doherty, M., and B. Zorn, "Design of a Completely Visual
Object-Oriented Programming Language," in
Visual Object-Oriented Programming,
M. Burnett, A. Goldberg, and T. Lewis (eds.), New York:
Prentice-Hall, 1995 .
(
Postscript available.)
- Citrin, W., Doherty, M., and B. Zorn, "A Formal Definition of Control
Semantics in a Completely Visual Language," Dept. of Computer
Science, University of Colorado, Boulder, Technical Report
CU-CS-672-93, September 1993.
(
Mac Word version available.)
- Citrin, W., M. Doherty, and B. Zorn, "Formal Semantics of Control in a
Completely Visual Programming Language," Proc. IEEE-CS
Symposium on Visual Languages, St. Louis, MO, October 1994.
(
Mac Word version available.)