Syllabus

CS 131: Programming Languages
Spring 2001

• Course Staff:
  • Professor Chris Stone, 1253 Olin, stone@cs.hmc.edu
  • Steve Diverdi, sdiverdi@cs.hmc.edu
  • Ed Miller, edmiller@cs.hmc.edu

• Lectures: Tuesday and Thursday, 2:45-4:00, PA 1285.
  

• Web Page: http://www.cs.hmc.edu/courses/2001/fall/cs131/
  
  
• Office Hours/Tutoring: E-mail questions or comments can be sent at any time. It is stronly suggested you send such messages to cs131help@cs.hmc.edu, because it will go the entire staff and hence will get the quickest response. However, if you would like to speak with someone in person, office hours will be held as follows:
  • Chris Stone: Mondays and Wednesdays 3--5pm, Olin 1253.
  • Steve Diverdi: Wednesdays 7--9pm, Terminal Room (B100).
  • Ed Miller: Mondays, 8--10pm, Terminal Room (B100).
    
    
• Catalog Description: A thorough examination of issues and features in language design and implementation including language-provided data structuring and data-typing, modularity, scoping, inheritance, and concurrency. Compilation and run-time issues. Introduction to formal semantics. Prerequisites: Computer Science 70 and 80.
  
  
• Real Description: The goal of this course is to provide you with a framework for thinking about programming languages. The course is not primarily about programming (although there is a lot of this, and the course may well affect the way you program); instead, we go "up a level" and view the languages themselves as the topic of study.
  
  You already had an introduction to this topic in CS 60, where you used four languages representing at least four different approaches: Java for object-oriented programming, rex for functional programming, Prolog for logic programming, and ISCAL for low-level (assembly) programming. This course, however, has a slightly different emphasis and uses what is sometimes referred to as the language principles approach. By organizing lectures around key ideas that recur in many different languages (and ignoring relatively unimportant details like syntax), you should be able to better understand many more than four languages, including ones that haven't even been invented yet. (Obviously, if you actually want to write programs in, for example, Haskell, details of syntax are absolutely critical!. However (after this course) if you're told it's a statically scoped, polymorphically typed, higher-order, lazy, purely functional language, you immediately have a huge head-start in learning the language.)
  
  The reason why this course should matter (beside being intrinsically fascinating, of course!) is that programming languages are ubiquitous in computer science. There are always new languages being devised, a very small number of which become widely used; typically, these are specialized languages for particular applications (e.g., Java or VRML). As a computer scientist, you must be able to learn new languages as necessary, and the background you get from this course should make this easier. A lesser number of you may design a programming language yourself; not necessarily a full-scale general-purpose language, but perhaps a language for describing input to or configuration of another program. This course should give you a better chance of avoiding common pitfalls when doing so. We will also talk a little bit about implementation of languages, though if you are interested in this aspect you should definitely take the Compiler Design course.
  Finally, you will almost certainly have to choose which programming language to use for a particular project. A major goal of this course is to give you enough background in the study of programming languages that you can argue persuasively why a particular language is appropriate (or inappropriate) for a particular problem.
  
  
• Course mailing list: The course mailing list will be used for announcements relevant to the entire class, some of which may be important. It is your responsibility to contact the instructor if you are not on the list.
  
  
• Course materials: The primary source of information for the course will be the lecture slides and periodic handouts. However, because the programming assignments require the use of Standard ML, and the SML overview in class will be fairly fast-pased, the following book has been made available at Huntley:

  Elements of ML Programming (ML97 Edition), Jeffrey D. Ullman, Prentice Hall, 1998.

  Although there will be no required readings from this book, a reference for the language (this or another) may well be helpful if you are having difficulties. A copy of this text is on reserve at the desk of Sprague Library.
  

• Assignments and Grading: Homework assignments will be given weekly on Thursdays, and due at the beginning of the class the following Thursday. Late assignments will not be accepted except in very special cases where prior arrangements have been made with the instructor. Solutions will be available as soon as the assignment comes due. All assignments will be given equal weight.
  
  The course grade will be based on homeworks (70%), and an open-book/open-notes final examination (20%), and in-class activity (10%). There may also be opportunities in the course for small amounts of extra credit, but this is not guaranteed. Please note that because the grade is so heavily homework-weighted, it is very difficult to recover from a series of skipped homeworks. Do not expect to wait until the end of the semester and hand in homeworks you skipped; they will not be accepted.
  
  The standard CS Academic Honesty Policy applies to this course, relaxed only as follows: you are free to discuss a problem with other students, and even hash out the general framework of a solution as long as you explicitly cite this (limited) collaboration. However, the actual work handed in must be entirely your own; as the honesty policy states, you may not share code or other specific answers in any form.