The Programming Page
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While being a compuer scientist or software engineer is much more
than just programming, I believe that good programming skills
are a must, even if (maybe) we do not program (anymore) in our jobs.
A general overview about the various existing programming languages can be
found in the language list which
is maintained at the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
Locally available information:
Some programming languages are standardized. Usually, such standards are
either developed in the first place by ISO, or are later adopted by them.
This is somewhat unfortunate, because ISO doesn't give their standards
away for free. In fact, you have to pay rather dearly to get a copy of a
standard. So don't go searching the web for standards, you won't find much.
Some things that are available are the following:
- ANSI-C
Rationale, a document explaining the choices made in the
former ANSI (now ISO) standard for C. (This document is not part
of the ISO standard, which is why it is available on the web.)
- The ISO/ANSI standard for C is not available on-line. But a summary
of the "Technical
Corrigendum 1", which corrected and clarified the standard,
is available. And so is a summary of
"Technical
Corrigendum 2".
- C has been revised extensively in the late nineteen-nineties. For
information on this new standard,
see my special page.
- The
Ada 95
Reference Manual and the
Ada 95 Rationale.
These two are publicly available because the copyright is not ISO's.
- A
draft of
the C++ standard also exists. (But note that this is not the final
standard! That one must be bought from ISO.)
- The ISO standard on
language-independent
arithmetic.
- The IEEE standard for binary floating-point arithmetic (ANSI/IEEE
Std 754-1985) is not available in electronic form, but at least it
was published as ACM SIGPLAN Notices 22(2),
pp. 9-25, Feb. 1987.
Finally, ISO standards can be ordered!