Chapter 2: BASIC, PL/I, and Early OOP

Question 1

What user group was the target of the first version of BASIC?

Answer 1

Liberal arts (non-science) students

Question 2

Why was BASIC an important language in the early 1980s?

Answer 2

It was easy for beginners and could fit in the very small memories of early microcomputers

Question 3

PL/I was designed to replace what two languages?

Answer 3

Fortran and COBOL

Question 4

For what new line of computers was PL/I designed?

Answer 4

The IBM System/360 line of computers

Question 5

What features of SIMULA 67 are now important parts of some object-oriented languages?

Answer 5

The class construct and data abstraction

Question 6

What innovation of data structuring was introduced in ALGOL 68 but is often credited to Pascal?

Answer 6

User-defined data types

Question 7

What design criterion was used extensively in ALGOL 68?

Answer 7

Orthogonality

Question 8

What language introduced the case statement?

Answer 8

ALGOL-W

Question 9

What operators in C were modeled on similar operators in ALGOL 68?

Answer 9

Assignment operators such as +=

Question 10

What are two characteristics of C that make it less safe than Pascal?

Answer 10

Lack of complete type checking and no array subscript bounds checking