Title: A comparison of modern special-purpose languages

Proposer: Hans-Wolfgang Loidl

Suggested supervisors: Hans-Wolfgang Loidl

Goal: Comparing programmability, performance and tool support

Description:

A number of novel special-purpose programming languages aim to deliver added value to programming in specific domains. Examples of such languages are Rust[1], Pony[2], Julia[3], Kotlin[4], Vala[5], and Squirrel[6]. These languages promise faster development of code in their domains. They combine features from several paradigms such as object-oriented, functional and imperative programming. They gain flexibility by using a virtual machine for execution.

The goal of this project is to perform a comparison between a selection of these languages, and to assess programmability, performance, and tool support for these languages. They key steps in the project are:

• literature review on the characteristics and status of these languages, and a selection of the languages to be studied;
• an implementation of one or more example application in each of these languages;
• a comparison of programmability, performance and tool support in each of these languages

Resources required: Departmental Linux machines

Degree of difficulty: Moderate

Background needed: A range of programming languages

References: [1] Rust [2] Pony [3] Julia [4] Kotlin [5] Vala [6] Squirrel