CSCI.4430/6969 Programming Languages-- Fall 2009

Instructor: Carlos Varela
Office: Lally 308 (x 6912)
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Fridays, 4-5pm; or by appointment
Meeting Place: Darrin 318
Meeting Hours: Tuesdays and Fridays 2:00-3:50pm
TAs: Wei Huang and Yousaf Shah
TAs Office: Amos Eaton 217
TAs Office Hours: Tuesday 10:00AM-11:30AM and Wednesday 9:00AM-10:30AM (Yousaf Shah), Monday 04:00PM-05:30PM and Thursday 04:00PM-05:30PM (Wei Huang), or by appointment.
Home page: http://www.cs.rpi.edu/academics/courses/fall09/proglang/
For questions about the course, please email: proglang AT cs DOT rpi DOT edu.
RPI LMS Web Page

News

Programming Assignment 1 is available.
Programming Assignment 2 is available.
Programming Assignment 3 is available.

Course Description

This course will enable students to understand essential aspects of programming languages --e.g., theoretical foundations, syntax, semantics, types, scope of variables, data abstraction, control abstraction, parameter passing and expression evaluation mechanisms. Students will also be exposed to different programming paradigms (computation models) including logic programming, functional programming, and concurrent and distributed programming. Students will write programming assignments in Prolog, Oz, and SALSA.

Pre-requisites

CSCI.2400 Models of Computation.

Course Themes

Programming Language Essentials. Logic, Functional, Concurrent Object-Oriented Programming Paradigms.

Learning Outcomes

When the students have successfully completed this course, they will be able to:

understand the essential aspects of programming languages, including theoretical foundations such as the lambda calculus, predicate calculus and the actor model,
compare and apply multiple programming paradigms,
design and develop logic, functional, and concurrent programs.

Course Contents

Introduction

Brief history of programming languages
Syntax
Semantics
Essentials
Paradigms

Logic Programming

Horn clauses
Resolution and unification
Search and backtracking

Functional and Imperative Programming

Lambda calculus
Scope of variables
Data abstraction/control abstraction
Static/dynamic scoping
Parameter passing mechanisms
Expression evaluation orders
Types
Recursion
Higher-order programming
Lazy evaluation
State (Imperative programming)

Concurrent and Distributed Object-Oriented Programming

Actors
Synchronous vs asynchronous communication, message passing
Token-passing continuations, join blocks, first-class continuations
Universal naming, remote message passing, migration (Distributed programming)

Tentative Course Syllabus

Date	Topic	Handouts	Grade
09/01	Introduction to programming languages: history, syntax, semantics, essentials, paradigms. Logic programming: introduction, Horn clauses	Intro,PLP11A.pdf rainy.pl
09/04	Logic programming: predicate calculus--Programming Assignment 1 Due 09/21	PLP11B.pdf Assignment-1	20%
09/08	Prolog: resolution, unification, search, backtracking, cut, lists	PLP11C.pdf cut.pl cut2.pl cut3.pl cut4.pl cut5.pl loop.pl not2.pl append.pl
09/11	Prolog: arithmetic, equalities, I/O, meta-interpreters, natural language parsing	PLP11D.pdf SourceCodes_PLP11D
09/15	Logic programming: accumulators, difference lists	PLP11E,Sections3.4.3-3.4.4.pdf accumulators.oz accumulators.pl dlists.oz
09/18	Lambda calculus: alpha-renaming, beta conversion, applicative and normal evaluation orders, Church-Rosser theorem, combinators	combinators
09/22	Introduction to programming concepts: lists, pattern matching, Oz -- Programming Assignment 2 Due 10/13	Sections1.1-1.8.pdf scope.oz comb.oz lists.oz pascal.oz rainy.oz	20%
09/25	Introduction to programming concepts: correctness, complexity	Sections1.9-1.17.pdf concepts.oz store.oz
09/29	Higher order programming	eta.oz hop.oz lambda-booleans.oz lambda-numbers.oz rec.oz seq.oz
10/02	Declarative programming, grammars, syntax and semantics.	Section2.1.pdf scope2.oz
10/06	Single-assignment store, kernel language syntax	Sections2.2-2.3.pdf single-assignment.oz recursion.oz
10/09	Kernel language semantics: concepts, abstract machine	Sections2.4.1-2.4.2 Kernel
10/16	Kernel language semantics: non-suspendable,suspendable statements, closures	Sections2.4.3-2.4.4 dataflow.oz
10/20	From kernel to practical language, exceptions	Sections2.4.5,2.6,2.7.pdf semantics.oz
10/23	Exam I review
10/27	Exam I		20%
10/30	Memory management, tail-form optimization, garbage collection.	Section2.5.pdf memleak.oz
11/03	Iterative computation, higher order programming, abstract data types	Sections3.1-3.2,3.6-3.7.pdf sqrt.oz fold.oz stackADT.oz
11/06	Exam I Solutions
11/10	Dynamic and static typing, state, parameter passing mechanisms	Sections2.8.3,6.1-6.4.4.pdf types.oz parameterpassing.oz
11/13	Concurrent OO programming in SALSA: actor creation, message passing, internal state, token-passing continuations, join blocks, first-class continuations	SALSA-Concurrency Salsa_Examples	20%
11/17	Distributed programming in SALSA: universal naming, remote communication, actor migration	SALSA-Distributed.pdf dist_examples.zip
11/20	Concurrent and Distributed Programming Patterns in SALSA	SALSA-Patterns
11/24	No Lecture