Baby Modula-3 is a

functional programming In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by applying and composing functions. It is a declarative programming paradigm in which function definitions are trees of expressions that ...

sublanguage A sublanguage is a subset of a language. Sublanguages occur in natural language, computer programming language, and relational databases. In natural language In informatics, natural language processing, and machine translation, a sublanguage ...

Modula-3 Modula-3 is a programming language conceived as a successor to an upgraded version of Modula-2 known as Modula-2+. While it has been influential in research circles (influencing the designs of languages such as Java, C#, and Python) it has not ...

(safe subset)

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming l ...

based on

ideals Ideal may refer to: Philosophy * Ideal (ethics), values that one actively pursues as goals * Platonic ideal, a philosophical idea of trueness of form, associated with Plato Mathematics * Ideal (ring theory), special subsets of a ring considered ...

invented by

Martín Abadi Martín Abadi (born 1963) is an Argentine computer scientist, working at Google . He earned his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in computer science from Stanford University in 1987 as a student of Zohar Manna. He is well known for his work on compu ...

. It is an

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of " objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...

language for studying

programming language design A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer program, computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be visual programming language, graphical. They are a kind of computer ...

; one part of it is implicitly prototype-oriented, and the other is explicitly statically typed designed for studying

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includin ...

type theory In mathematics, logic, and computer science, a type theory is the formal system, formal presentation of a specific type system, and in general type theory is the academic study of type systems. Some type theories serve as alternatives to set theor ...

. It has been checked as a

formal language In logic, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language consists of words whose letters are taken from an alphabet and are well-formed according to a specific set of rules. The alphabet of a formal language consists of s ...

metaprogramming Metaprogramming is a programming technique in which computer programs have the ability to treat other programs as their data. It means that a program can be designed to read, generate, analyze or transform other programs, and even modify itself ...

systems. It comes from the ''Scandinavian School'' of object-oriented languages. Abadi tried to give an example of pure object-oriented language which would allow studying the formal semantics of objects. "Baby Modula-3 is defined with a structured

operational semantics Operational semantics is a category of formal programming language semantics in which certain desired properties of a program, such as correctness, safety or security, are verified by constructing proofs from logical statements about its execut ...

and with a set of static type rules. A denotational semantics guarantees the soundness of this definition."Baby Modula-3 and a theory of objects
Martin Abadi.

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president unti ...

(DEC) Systems Research Center (SRC) Research Report 95 (February 1993) This object model has been shown to have well definiteness decidability (a mechanical proof of it isn't known). Abadi worked at

(DEC) Systems Research Center (SRC) in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...

. As DEC was bought by

Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...

and then Compaq was bought by Hewlett-Packard (HP), the SRC-report 95 was made available to the public by HP.

Influences

Luca Cardelli Luca Andrea Cardelli, Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), is an Italian computer scientist who is a research professor at the University of Oxford in Oxford, UK. Cardelli is well known for his research in type theory and operational semantics. A ...

and Martín Abadi wrote the book ''A Theory of Objects'' in 1996, laying out formal calculi for the semantics of object-oriented programming languages. Baby Modula-3 influenced this work according to Cardelli, and guided a calculus of the type of

self The self is an individual as the object of that individual’s own reflective consciousness. Since the ''self'' is a reference by a subject to the same subject, this reference is necessarily subjective. The sense of having a self—or ''selfhood ...

in ''Types for object and the type of 'self. It has opened the way for work on Modula-3 formal semantic checking systems, for object-oriented

type system In computer programming, a type system is a logical system comprising a set of rules that assigns a property called a type to every "term" (a word, phrase, or other set of symbols). Usually the terms are various constructs of a computer progra ...

programming languages that have been used to model the formal semantics of languages such as

Ada Ada may refer to: Places Africa * Ada Foah, a town in Ghana * Ada (Ghana parliament constituency) * Ada, Osun, a town in Nigeria Asia * Ada, Urmia, a village in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran * Ada, Karaman, a village in Karaman Province, Tu ...

and C.

References

{{Prog-lang-stub Academic programming languages Modula programming language family Prototype-based programming languages Programming language design