Mesa is a general-purpose, strongly typed systems programming language developed at Xerox PARC in the 1970s, used to build the Xerox Alto and Xerox Star workstation software, including some of the earliest graphical user interface environments. Mesa introduced or popularized features that later became mainstream, including modular compilation with explicit interface and implementation modules, exception handling, and lightweight cooperative processes as a language-level concurrency primitive. Mesa's design directly influenced its own successor at PARC, Cedar, and indirectly influenced Modula-2 and later systems languages.
Facts
First Released SignificanceMesa and Cedar had a major influence on the design of other important languages such as Modula-2 and Java, and were an important vehicle for developing and disseminating the fundamentals of GUIs and networked environments. 2 Classification
Typing Discipline Typing Discipline Connections
Follows Typing Discipline
Entity-backed identity for the typing discipline value this language already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a concept entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.
Entity-backed identity for the typing discipline value this language already carries as an enum fact, resolved to a concept entity by an explicit value-to-entity map (phase 3 bucket conversion, docs\design_entity_backed_browse_buckets_20260928.md). The enum fact itself stays on the entity unchanged.
In Field
Source Mesa (programming language), Wikipedia
Influenced
Source Wikidata: Modula-2
Influenced By
Sources
1. Wikidata: Mesa
- Wikidata Q1042397, resolved via en.wikipedia pageprops (wave rule R-L)
- Wikidata Q1042397 P7078 (typing discipline)
- Influenced By: ALGOL
View the Source2. Mesa (programming language), Wikipedia
Article text, sentence beginning Mesa and Cedar had a major influence
Mesa and Cedar had a major influence on the design of other important languages, such as Modula-2 and Java, and was an important vehicle for the development and dissemination of the fundamentals of GUIs, networked environments, and the other advances Xerox contributed to the field of computer science.
- In Field: Programming Language Theory, Lead paragraph
View the SourceReader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.