Instructor

Roger Hartley, SH 148, telephone 646-1218

Office Hours: Mondays, 1:00 - 3:00 pm; Thursdays, 11:00 am - 1:00 pm.

Where and when

Room: SH113 Time: TTh 1:10 - 2:25 pm

Textbook:

Programming Languages, Concepts and Structures. Ravi Sethi, Addison Wesley, 2nd. Edition, 1996.

Course outline

This course presents a survey of computer languages from a conceptual point of view. There are relatively few concepts which all computer languages have and most have them in common. The differences among them are mostly in their syntax and their model of computation, or their programming methodology. We will examine the basic concepts as they arise in a variety of different languages, and discuss how the

implementation of the concepts affect their usage as programming tools. When a major language is discussed, a language system that works in our domain will be used to help the discussion.

Syllabus

• [1] Introduction: models of computation, real and virtual machines, taxonomy of languages
• [2] Description methodologies: syntax, semantics, pragmatics. BNF and Extended BNF.
• [3, 4] Elements of programming languages: expressions, functions, declarations, values, recursion, scope, types.
• [5, 6] Imperative languages: the assignment statement. Algol60, Pascal, Modula 2, C, Ada. Structured programming. Control flow. Pointers.
• [7] Procedures: environments and stores, parameter passing.
• [8] First test. More on procedures: activation records, block structure, dynamic allocation.
• [9] Encapsulation: modules and information hiding, classes in C++. Java.
• [10] Inheritance: Smalltalk 80, methods and messages.
• [11, 12] Functional programming: Scheme and Lisp, list processing, ML and type checking.
• [12, 13, 14] Logic programming: Prolog. Relations and declarative programming, backtracking goal evaluation.
• [15] Concurrency: parallel hardware, synchronization, deadlock, rendezvous in Ada.
• [15, 16] Advanced topics: abstract and concrete syntax, operational semantics through an definitional interpreter, lambda calculus for types.
• [17] Final examination.

Calendar

	   August 1996
	 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
      	       1  2  3
	 4  5  6  7  8  9 10
	11 12 13 14 15 16 17
[1]	18 19 20 21 22 23 24	Classes start: 21st
[2]	25 26 27 28 29 30 31	Deadline for add: 30th
	   September 1996
	 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
[3]	 1  2  3  4  5  6  7	Labor day: 2nd
[4]	 8  9 10 11 12 13 14
[5]	15 16 17 18 19 20 21
[6]	22 23 24 25 26 27 28
[7]	29 30
	   October 1996
	 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
	       1  2  3  4  5
[8]	 6  7  8  9 10 11 12	First exam: 10th
[9]	13 14 15 16 17 18 19	Last drop day: 16th
[10]	20 21 22 23 24 25 26
[11]	27 28 29 30 31
	   November 1996
	 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
	                1  2
[12]	 3  4  5  6  7  8  9
[13]	10 11 12 13 14 15 16	Moratorium: 15th
[14]	17 18 19 20 21 22 23	
[15]	24 25 26 27 28 29 30	Thanksgiving: 27th - 29th
	   December 1996
	 S  M Tu  W Th  F  S
[16] 	 1  2  3  4  5  6  7	Last day of classes: 6th
[17]	 8  9 10 11 12 13 14	Exam week: 9th - 13th; Final: Thu, 1 - 3pm
	15 16 17 18 19 20 21   
	22 23 24 25 26 27 28
	29 30 31

Assessment

There will be a mid-term test and a final comprehensive examination. There will also be a number of homework assignments (four or five) taken from the exercises in the textbook, or from other material. The proportion of credit is as follows:

Test 1: 20%

Final: 40%

Homework: 40%

My grading is always flexible, but justice will also be done! The penalty for late work is that it receives a maximum C grade, but there will be two cut-off dates. A moratorium date is included in the calendar after which, any work that is due but not handed in will receive a zero. The first day of exam week is the last day for handing in work for credit.