toy language


toy language

(language)A language useful for instructional purposes or asa proof-of-concept for some aspect of computer-science theory,but inadequate for general-purpose programming. Bad Thingscan result when a toy language is promoted as a generalpurpose solution for programming (see bondage-and-discipline language); the classic example is Pascal. Severalmoderately well-known formalisms for conceptual tasks such asprogramming Turing Machines also qualify as toy languages ina less negative sense.

See also MFTL.