Napier88

Napier88Paradigms| Multi-paradigm: Procedural, imperative, structured

|

Family| ALGOL
Designed by| Ron Morrison, Fred Brown, Richard Connor, Al Dearle
Developer| University of St Andrews
First appeared| 1988; 38 years ago (1988)
Implementation language| S-algol
Influenced by
ALGOL 60, S-algol, PS-algol

Napier88 is an orthogonally persistent programming language that was designed and implemented at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. The primary designer was Ron Morrison, whose initial designs were extended and implemented by Fred Brown, Richard Connor, and Al Dearle. Napier88 was ahead of its time in many ways, and was the first robustly implemented language to combine a polymorphic type system with orthogonal persistence. The language was robustly implemented and released to users from both industry and academia; up to 1,000 registered users were recorded in due course. The language, however, was only intended to provide a proof of concept for an experiment in persistent programming; some time after 1989 (the year the first implementation was in fact released) the group's interests moved on and the language was no longer maintained.

Its influence lives on in various other systems however; the CORBA type `ANY` is distinctly recognisable in Napier88's type `ANY`; Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR) uses a similar polymorphic architecture, and Java's parametric types solve some of the same problems of uninstantiated types escaping from their static scope.

## History

Napier88 was the third of a family of languages designed and implemented by Morrison at St Andrews, following on from S-algol and PS-algol.

## Further reading

* Morrison, R; Connor, RCH; Kirby, GNC; Munro, DS; Atkinson, MP; Cutts, QI; Brown, AL; Dearle, A. (1999), "The Napier88 Persistent Programming Language and Environment", in Atkinson, MP; Welland, R, Fully Integrated Data Environments, Esprit Basic Research Series, Springer, pp. 98–154, ISBN 3-540-65772-X, http://archive.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/papers/download/MCK+99.pdf
* Dearle, A (1988). On the Construction of Persistent Programming Environments (PDF) (PhD). Computational Science Department, University of St. Andrews.
* Dearle, A.; Connor, R.C.H.; Brown, A.L.; Morrison, R (1989), "Napier88 - A Database Programming Language?", Proc. 2nd International Workshop on Database Programming Languages, Salishan, Oregon, pp. 179–195, http://archive.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/papers/download/DCB+89.pdf
* Morrison, R; Brown, AL; Connor, RCH; Cutts, QI; Dearle, A; Kirby, GNC; Munro, DS (1996), Napier88 Reference Manual (Release 2.2.1), University of St Andrews, http://archive.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/papers/download/MBC+96b.pdf
* Kirby, GNC; Brown, AL; Connor, RCH; Cutts, QI; Dearle, A; Dunstan, VS; Morrison, R; Munro, DS (1996), Napier88 Standard Library Reference Manual (Release 2.2.1), University of St Andrews, http://archive.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/papers/download/KBC+96.pdf
* Bushell, SJ; Dearle, A; Brown, AL; Vaughan, FA (1994), "Using C as a Compiler Target Language for Native Code Generation in Persistent Systems", in Atkinson; Maier, D; Benzaken, V, Proc. 6th International Workshop on Persistent Object Systems (POS6), Tarascon, France, Springer-Verlag, pp. 164–183, http://archive.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/papers/download/BDB+94.pdf

## External links

* Description of Napier88 at Univ. of St Andrew's website. Accessed June 21, 2012

* v
* t
* e

ALGOL programming

Implementations|

| Technical
standards|

* ALGOL 58
* ALGOL 60
* ALGOL 68

|

Dialects|

* ABC ALGOL
* ALCOR
* ALGOL N
* ALGOL W
* ALGOL X
* Burroughs ALGOL
* Dartmouth ALGOL 30
* DASK ALGOL
* DG/L
* Elliott ALGOL
* Executive Systems Problem Oriented Language (ESPOL)
* Kidsgrove Algol
* Mary
* S-algol, PS-algol, Napier88
* Small Machine ALGOL Like Language (SMALL)
* SMIL ALGOL

Community|

| Organizations|

| Professional
associations|

* ALCOR Group
* Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
* International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) IFIP Working Group 2.1

|

Business|

* Burroughs Corporation
* Elliott Brothers
* Regnecentralen

Education|

* Case Institute of Technology
* University of Edinburgh
* University of St Andrews
* Manchester University
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
* Society of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (GAMM)

People|

| ALGOL 58|

* John Backus
* Hermann Bottenbruch
* Charles Katz
* Alan Perlis
* Heinz Rutishauser
* Klaus Samelson
* Joseph Henry Wegstein

|

ALGOL 60|

* Backus+
* Roland Carl Backhouse
* Friedrich L. Bauer
* Richard Bird
* Stephen R. Bourne
* Robert Dewar
* Edsger W. Dijkstra
* Andrey Ershov
* Robert W. Floyd
* Jeremy Gibbons
* Julien Green
* David Gries
* Eric Hehner
* Tony Hoare
* Katz+
* Peter Landin
* Tom Maibaum
* Conor McBride
* John McCarthy
* Carroll Morgan
* Peter Naur
* Maurice Nivat
* Perlis+
* Brian Randell
* Rutishauser
* Samelson+
* Jacob T. Schwartz
* Micha Sharir
* David Turner
* Bernard Vauquois
* Eiiti Wada
* Wegstein+
* Adriaan van Wijngaarden
* Michael Woodger
* \+ = full name and link in prior ALGOL version above

ALGOL 68|

* Bauer+
* Dijkstra+
* Gerhard Goos
* Hoare+
* Cornelis H. A. Koster
* Peter Landin
* Charles H. Lindsey
* Barry J. Mailloux
* McCarthy+
* Lambert Meertens
* Naur+
* John E. L. Peck
* Willem van der Poel
* Brian Randell
* Douglas T. Ross
* Samelson+
* Michel Sintzoff
* van Wijngaarden
* Niklaus Wirth
* Woodger+
* Nobuo Yoneda
* \+ = full name and link in prior ALGOL version above

* Hal Abelson
* Tony Brooker
* Jørn Jensen
* Ron Morrison
* John C. Reynolds

Other|

* ALGOL Bulletin
* Jensen's Device

* Category
* Category

0.00

(0 votes)

Original source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier88. Read more

|

Retrieved from "https://handwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Napier88&oldid=187590"
*[v]: View this template
*[t]: Discuss this template
*[e]: Edit this template