Chapter 1, Problem 23RQ

Explanation of Solution

Two language design criteria that are in direct conflict with each other:

For efficient language design, there are so many criteria that have to be kept in mind and the main problem is many of them conflict with each other. So the reconciliation and satisfaction of all of these criteria is a challenging engineering task Developers of any language has to compromise on some criteria to fulfill other criteria.

The choice of these criteria depends mainly upon the use and potential audience of the language. The two contradicting criteria in language design are:

• Cost of execution; and
• Reliability.

The classic example of this dilemma is checking of the array bounds for any index.

For example, JAVA, at the compile time checks that all the references to arrays have their indices within the bounds.

• As a result, JAVA code is more reliable but takes more time to execute if there are more references to arrays.
• The designers of JAVA traded execution time for reliability...