1989/09/01 by Henri E. Bal, Jennifer G. Steiner, Andrew S. Tanenbaum · 1 citation
Computer Science · #Comparison of multi-paradigm programming languages #Computer science #Declarative programming #Distributed and Parallel Computing Systems #Distributed computing #Distributed systems and fault tolerance #Fifth-generation programming language #Inductive programming #Parallel Computing and Optimization Techniques #Programming language #Programming paradigm #Rendezvous #Second-generation programming language #Third-generation programming language
paper · pdf · doi:10.1145/72551.72552
openalex publication_date 1989/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
When distributed systems first appeared, they were programmed in traditional sequential languages, usually with the addition of a few library procedures for sending and receiving messages. As distributed applications became more commonplace and more sophisticated, this ad hoc approach became less satisfactory. Researchers all over the world began designing new programming languages specifically for implementing distributed applications. These languages and their history, their underlying principles, their design, and their use are the subject of this paper. We begin by giving our view of what a distributed system is, illustrating with examples to avoid confusion on this important and controversial point. We then describe the three main characteristics that distinguish distributed programming languages from traditional sequential languages, namely, how they deal with parallelism, communication, and partial failures. Finally, we discuss 15 representative distributed languages to give the flavor of each. These examples include languages based on message passing, rendezvous, remote procedure call, objects, and atomic transactions, as well as functional languages, logic languages, and distributed data structure languages. The paper concludes with a comprehensive bibliography listing over 200 papers on nearly 100 distributed programming languages.