Content area
The objective of the research for this dissertation was to develop a qualitative methodology for comparing and assessing general-purpose programming languages and to develop software metrics that are useful for the programming languages community. The qualitative methodology was developed by accumulating features of programming languages from the software engineering perspective and the programming languages perspective. The developed qualitative methodology provides a framework for evaluating and comparing general-purpose programming languages. The software metrics developed during the research for this dissertation are valuable tools that help programming language implementors, designers, and researchers to observe, understand, and deal with interactions among components of programming languages. A clustering algorithm that also benefits the programming languages community was developed during the research for this dissertation. The application of the software metrics and clustering algorithm presented in this dissertation is not limited to programming languages, but can be applied to other hierarchical structures such as software products and organizational charts.