A comment on English neologisms and programming language keywords
- 1 December 1982
- journal article
- Published by Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in Communications of the ACM
- Vol. 25 (12) , 938-940
- https://doi.org/10.1145/358728.358756
Abstract
The choice of keywords in the design of programming languages is compared to the formation of neologisms, or new words, in natural languages. Examination of keywords in high-level programming languages shows that they are formed using mechanisms analogous to those observed in English. The use of mirror words as closing keywords is a conspicuous exceptions.Keywords
This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit:
- Program readability, closing keywords and prefix-style intermediate keywordsACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1978
- A reminder for language designersACM SIGPLAN Notices, 1977
- Programming languages, natural languages, and mathematicsCommunications of the ACM, 1975
- Structured Programming with go to StatementsACM Computing Surveys, 1974