Pico (programming language)
{{Other uses|Pico (disambiguation)}}
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{{External links|date=March 2017}}
{{More citations needed|date=December 2023}}
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{{Infobox programming language
| name = Pico
| paradigms = Reflective, procedural
| family = Lisp
| designers = Theo D'Hondt
Wolfgang De Meuter
| developer = Vrije Universiteit Brussel
| released = {{Start date and age|1995}}
| latest release version = 2.0
| latest release date = {{Start date and age|2007}}
| programming language = Scheme
| operating system = Mac OS 9, macOS; Linux–BSD, Windows
| website = {{URL|pico.vub.ac.be}}
| influenced by = Scheme, Smalltalk
}}
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.{{cite journal |last1=D'Hondt |first1=Theo |last2=Gonzalez |first2=Sebastian |last3=De Meuter |first3=Wolfgang |date=1 January 1999 |title=The design and rationale behind pico |url=https://www.academia.edu/509697/The_design_and_rationale_behind_pico |journal=Programming Technology Lab, Department of Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel |page= |access-date=3 December 2023}} 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 elements
De Meuter, Gonzalez, and D'Hondt describe the Pico syntax as being "two-tiered." The first layer consists of simple rules for writing small programs in a functional programming style.
= Comments =
Comments are surrounded by backquotes ("`").
= Variables =
= Functions =
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. 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)
= Operators =
Operators can be used as prefix or infix in Pico:
+(5, 2)
5 + 2
= Data types =
= Control structures =
== Conditional evaluation ==
Only the usual if statement is included
if(condition, then, else)
Code snippets
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
Implementations
= Mac OS, Mac OS X =
- [http://pico.vub.ac.be/downloads.html MacPico]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20040221012930/http://wilma.vub.ac.be/~pvdabeel/stuff/Xpico-Snaps/ XPico]
= Windows =
- [http://pico.vub.ac.be/downloads.html WinPico] This version is buggy
- [http://student.vub.ac.be/~nkaraogl/WinPico/ WinPico stable]
= Linux =
- [http://dirk.rave.org/ TextPico for Linux]
= Cross-platform =
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20080905092122/http://www.infogroep.be/sPico sPico for DrScheme]
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- {{Official website}}
- [http://soft.vub.ac.be/ Software Languages Lab]
- [http://dinf.vub.ac.be/ Department of Computer Science at VUB]
- [http://www.vub.ac.be/ VUB]
- [https://web.archive.org/web/20080905092145/http://www.infogroep.be/Pico The Infogroep Pico page]
{{Lisp programming language}}
Category:Programming languages created in 1997
Category:Programming languages
Category:Educational programming languages
Category:Academic programming languages