Abstract

ive Power of Programming Languages by John N. Shutt Computer Science Technical Report Series WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE Computer Science Department 100 Institute Road, Worcester, Massachusetts 01609-2280 S-Expressiveness and the Abstractive Power of Programming Languages John N. Shutt jshutt@cs.wpi.edu Computer Science Department Worcester Polytechnic Institute Worcester, MA 01609 December 1999 Abstract This paper investigates possible approaches to developing a mathematical model of the process of abstraction in programming. In particular, two formal measures are considered for comparing the relative abstractive power of programming languages. A measure called expressiveness, proposed elsewhere by M. Felleisen, is found insufficient for the current task because it is concerned with expression only of runtime semantics. A second measure called S-expressiveness, defined here, doesn't fully capture abstractive power either, but its shortcomings are differe...

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