Pico (programming language)
{{#invoke:other uses|otheruses}} Template:Multiple issues Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox programming language Pico is a programming language developed at the Software Languages Lab at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, intended to be simple, powerful, extensible, and easy to read.<ref name="pico_d&r">Template:Cite journal</ref> The language was created to introduce the essentials of programming to non-computer science students.
Pico can be seen as an effort to generate a palatable and enjoyable language for people who do not want to study hard for the elegance and power of a language. They have done it by adapting Scheme's semantics.
While designing Pico, the Software Languages Lab was inspired by the Abelson and Sussman's book "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs". Furthermore, they were influenced by the teaching of programming at high school or academic level.
Pico should be interpreted as 'small', the idea was to create a small language for educational purposes.
Language elementsEdit
De Meuter, Gonzalez, and D'Hondt describe the Pico syntax as being "two-tiered."<ref name="pico_d&r" /> The first layer consists of simple rules for writing small programs in a functional programming style.
CommentsEdit
Comments are surrounded by backquotes ("`").
VariablesEdit
Variables are dynamically typed; Pico uses static scope.
var: value
FunctionsEdit
Functions, like everything in Pico, are first-class objects, meaning they can be assigned to variables and passed to and returned from functions. Also, there are no anonymous functions in Pico; functions must have a name.<ref name="pico_d&r" /> For example, a function, func, with two parameters, param1 and param2, can be defined as:
func(param1, param2): ...
Functions can be called with the following syntax:
func(arg1, arg2)
OperatorsEdit
Operators can be used as prefix or infix in Pico:
+(5, 2) 5 + 2
Data typesEdit
Pico has the following types: string, integer, real and tables.
It does not have a native char type, so users should resort to size 1 strings.
Tables are compound data structures that may contain any of the regular data types.
Boolean types are represented by functions (as in lambda calculus).
Control structuresEdit
Conditional evaluationEdit
Only the usual if statement is included
if(condition, then, else)
Code snippetsEdit
display('Hello World', eoln)
max(a, b): if(a < b, b, a)
`http://www.paulgraham.com/accgen.html`
foo(n): fun(i): n := n+i
ImplementationsEdit
Mac OS, Mac OS XEdit
WindowsEdit
- WinPico This version is buggy
- WinPico stable