BKG2PRGL.RVW 950803 "A Guide to Programming Languages", Ruknet Cezzar, 1995, 0-89006-812-7, U$49.00 %A Ruknet Cezzar %C 685 Canton St., Norwood, MA 02062 %D 1995 %G 0-89006-812-7 %I Artech House %O U$49.00 617-769-9750 800-225-9977 fax: 617-769-6334 artech@world.std.com %P 496 %T "A Guide to Programming Languages" Over the years, I have noted that those who actually get paid for producing code tend to know relatively few programming languages. It's the "non- programmers" who will sometimes know a few dozen languages, although none, perhaps, terribly well. Those who started with Pascal cling to Pascal; those who learned BASIC first can't handle anything without GOTOs; and those who cut their teeth on COBOL are probably all managers now, anyway. Cezzar's book starts out with three chapters which give a structure not only for examining languages, but also to the activity of programming, itself. Although the text is intended for professionals or academic study, an easing of the formal language would make this a highly suitable book for the general public. (The scholarly style is a cover: there are nuggets of humour and personal observation buried within for the careful reader.) Following the structure thus laid out, Cezzar compares Ada, BASIC, C, COBOL, FORTRAN, Pascal, LISP, PROLOG, and C++. There are special chapters on object- oriented programming and visual programming which look, in less detail, at Smalltalk, Eiffel, Visual Basic, and Visual C++. A series of programming problems are given parallel solutions in the major languages. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995 BKG2PRGL.RVW 950803 ============== ______________________ Vancouver ROBERTS@decus.ca | | /\ | | swiped Institute for rslade@cln.etc.bc.ca | | __ | | __ | | from Research into Rob.Slade@f733.n153.z1/| | \ \ / / | | Mike User .fidonet.org| | /________\ | | Church Security Canada V7K 2G6 |____|_____][_____|____| @sfu.ca