COMS W4115
Programming Languages and Translators
Language Presentation Suggestions
May 11-13, 2015

Presentation Outline

1. Introduction
• show a title slide with the name of your language and the names and roles of your team members
• describe your language:
• explain what kind of language it is and what kind of model of computation you had in mind when you designed the language (e.g., Awk is a pattern-action scripting language for doing common data-processing applications)
• show and explain one or two sample programs that can be used as running examples throughout your presentation
• describe how programs written in your language are compiled and run,
• talk about your motivation for creating your language,
• state what properties you wanted programs in your language to have.
• introduce the next member of your team and state the role that that person played on the team
2. Describe the important syntactic constructs in your language
• use one or two sample programs to illustrate these constructs
3. Briefly describe how the project was managed.
4. Translator architecture
• show a block diagram of your translator
• show how a sample program is processed by your translator
5. Explain the run-time environment and how the target program is executed in that environment.
6. Describe the software development environment used.
7. Describe what compiler-generator tools were used.
8. Test plan: show how you tested your translator.
9. Conclusions
• compile and run one or two of your sample programs
• explain
• what you learned,
• what worked well,
• what you would have done differently, and
• why everyone should use your language!

Important Points

• Each team member needs to talk for at least three or four minutes but the entire presentation should not exceed 20 minutes.
• Your presentation should be an overview of your language and implementation intended to persuade others to look into your language in more depth. Do not try to cover all features of your language.
• And remember: pictures, diagrams, and animations on slides are much more interesting than just words.