1. A method for automatically translating input code to a computer executable output program representation, the method comprising: providing an input source program, wherein the input source program is expressed in a language that provides for dynamic collection attributes (DCAs), and wherein the dynamic collection attributes are data elements capable of having a variable number of indexed members at run time; wherein a specification of a DCA includes at least: a name, a type, an index, and one or more collective properties; wherein the type specified for the DCA establishes the type of collection and the type of members in the collection, for the DCA; wherein the DCAs have member-type properties determined by types of the indexed members of the DCAs, and wherein the language further provides for specifying collective properties of the DCAs that are distinct from the member-type properties; wherein the input source program includes one or more instances of DCAs having specified collective properties, and includes one or more expressions involving the one or more instances of DCAs; automatically inferring, using a translator, additional collective properties for the DCA based on the type specified for the DCA which were not included in the specified collective properties; automatically generating an internal representation, including: automatically generating, based on the specified collective properties and the inferred additional collective properties, procedure code that implements primitive operations on one or more DCAs; and automatically generating imperative code that evaluates the one or more expressions involving one or more instances of the DCAs, and that uses at least some calls to at least some of the primitive operations; translating, using the translator, the internal representation to the computer executable output program representation; and providing the computer executable output program representation as an output, wherein the collective properties of the DCA are orthogonal relative to an implementation of the translator such that a number of code blocks being implemented by the translator is less than a number of all the possible combinations of the collective properties of the DCAs.