Standard ML is one of a number of new programming languages developed in the 1980s that are seen as suitable vehicles for serious systems and applications programming. It offers an excellent ratio of expressiveness to language complexity, and provides competitive efficiency. Because of its type and module system, Standard ML manages to combine safety, security, and robustness with much of the flexibility of dynamically typed languages like Lisp. It is also has the most well-developed scientific foundation of any major language. Here I review the strengths and weaknesses of Standard ML and describe some of what we have learned through the design, implementation, and use of the language.

Software design is the phase of software life cycle where a precise notation is needed to express the system architectural view. The quality and validation of designs are established through analysis. A formal representation of design models and an automated design analysis system are desirable regardless of the methodology employed in the development. The object-oriented software development paradigm is being advocated as an effective methodology. Yet, neither a design framework, nor a set of analysis tools has been proposed to support this claim. The intent of this research is to provide some basis for the object-oriented design phase. An object-oriented design language was defined in order to facilitate the formalization of design expressions. A processor for the language was implemented. The major tasks of the processor are syntactic and semantic analyses. Thus, designs can be evaluated and validated before implementation.