Design of Griffin: A Common Prototyping Language

摘要

The objective of the Griffin project at NYU is the design of a language, called Griffin, for prototyping large software systems. The success and cost-effectiveness of prototyping depends on, among other things, a prototyping language that demonstrates expressiveness, flexibility, and conciseness. Griffin is intended to satisfy these requirements. The NYU approach to the design of Griffin based on the premise that the prototyping of large software systems can be performed more efficiently in a language that is specifically designed to support software experimentation. This approach reflects experience with the Ada/Ed translator written in SETL at NYU (the first validated ADA implementation) and other medium-scale prototyping experiments. The most important requirement of a prototyping language is that it provide the means to express the essential content of an algorithm, while permitting lower-level implementation details to be supplied by the system. Another basic requirement is that the language be easy to use and understand, so that program construction, debugging, and redesign are facilitated. An informal measure of the power of the language is the compactness of programs (compared with their implementation in a production language), though this is certainly not the only measure.