The ML Approach to the Readable All-Purpose Language

Abstract

The ideal computer language is seen as one that would be as readable as natural language, and so adaptable that it could serve as the only language a user need ever know. An approach to language design has emerged that shows promise of allowing one to come much closer to that ideal than might reasonably have been expected. Using this approach, a language referred to as ML has been developed, and has been implemented as a language-creation system in which user-defined procedures invoked at translation time translate the source to some object code. In this way the user can define both the syntax and the semantics of the source language. Both language and implementation are capable of further development. This paper describes the approach, the language, and the implementation and recommends areas for further work.