Denert(ID:2525/den002)Two-dimensional Algol dialectA two-dimensional Algol dialect programming language part of Ph D research by Denert, Reinhold Franck and Wolfgang Steng Related languages
References: DENERT: It had something to do with my research, but that is not the most important point. The important fact is that I learned to be self-motivated. I simply had to do these things. I had to lecture. I had to develop a manuscript two years after my diploma. ASPRAY: What was your research on for your degree? DENERT: I developed it with two other colleagues, Reinhold Franck and Wolfgang Steng. It was a two-dimensional programming language. It is very, very strange, as are most Ph.D. theses. ASPRAY: What's the rationale for having one? DENERT: A two-dimensional system means you don't write a program, you draw it. Let's have a look at some pictures here. If you deal with complex data structures, you would like to draw pictures like this. You have data elements which are connected by pointers and you are considering how an algorithm changes that situation. For example, you see the dashed lines here? That means before applying an algorithm to that data structure it looks like this. Afterwards it looks like this. The simple idea was to take this picture as a program. You simply write the data structure in a before-image and an after-image. You see the transformation. That's the effect of the algorithm. We developed a programming language where you can draw programs from manipulating such data structures. We did it in all consequences. We made a formal definition of syntax and semantics and Reinhold Franck expanded the theory of syntax analysis from the one-dimensional string case to the two-dimensional case. ASPRAY: Did this catch on at all? DENERT: No. It makes no sense. Quite simply it makes no sense to draw programs. It only made sense because we got our Ph.D. for it. [laughter] |