CS558 Programming Languages Winter 2008

Instructor: Andrew Tolmach

Course Information

• Syllabus
• Schedule
• Course Mailing List

Exams

• Sample Midterm Questions with Solutions

Lecture Notes and Supporting Code

• Introduction 1/8/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Syntax and Grammars 1/10/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Imperative Languages and Structured Programming 1/15/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Semantics, especially Axiomatic 1/17/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Binding; Scope; Large Values; Storage 1/22/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Formalized Operational Semantics (postponed to 2/5/08) (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Procedures; Calling Conventions 1/29/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Recursion 1/31/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Exceptions 2/7/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Functional Languages 2/14/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Values and Types 2/19/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Polymorphism and Type Inference 2/21/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Abstract Data Types 3/4/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Modules 3/6/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Object-oriented Languages 3/11/08 (pdf) (4up pdf)
• Object-oriented Language Implementation 3/13/08 (pdf) (4up pdf) (material on subtyping removed 3/13/08 6:40pm)

Homework Assignments

• Homework 1 (due 1/15/08) (pdf)
  • hw1_1.java sol1_1.java
  • hw1_1.sml sol1_1.sml
  • hw1_2.java sol1_2.java
  • hw1_2.sml sol1_2.sml
  • sol1_2.e1
• Homework 2 (due 1/22/08) (pdf) (solutions updated 1/23/08 4:15pm)
  • hw2_1.java sol2_1.e2 sol2_1.java
  • hw2_1.sml sol2_1.sml
  • primes.e2
  • sol2_2.txt
• Homework 3 (due 1/29/08) (pdf)
  • hw3.java
  • lists.e3
  • sol3_1.e3 sol3_2.java sol3_3.java sol3_3.e3 sol3_4.java sol3_4.e3
• Homework 4 (due 2/5/08) (pdf)
  • hw4_1.sml sol4_1.sml
  • hw4_2.java sol4_2.java
• Homework 5 (due 2/19/08) (pdf)
  • hw5_1.java sol5_1.txt
  • hw5_1.sml
  • smlnj_timeit.sml
  • mosml_timeit.sml
  • hw5_2.java map.e5 compose.e5 static.e5 sol5_2.java
  • sol5_3.sml
• Homework 6 (due 2/26/08) (pdf)
  • hw6.java sol6.java
• Homework 7 (due 3/4/08) (pdf)
  • sol7_1.sml
  • hw7_2.java sol7_2.java
• Homework 8 (due 3/11/08) (pdf)
  • sol8_1.sml
  • hw8_2.java example.e8 sol8_2.java

The author maintains a list of errata for Programming Languages: Principles and Practice. Check here first if you can't make sense of something in the text.

There's also a set of answers to selected exercises.

And here are suggested solutions to the SML programming problems in Louden's exercise 11.8.

Additional Readings

• C.A.R. Hoare, An Axiomatic Basis for Computer Programming, CACM, 12(10) Oct. 1969.
• C.A.R. Hoare, Hints on Programming Language Design, Stanford University Technical Report STAN-CS-73-403, Dec. 1973.
• Guy Steele, Growing a Language, Proc. OOPSLA Conference, 1998.

Language Resources

• Java
  • Language Reference
    The official Java Language Specification, 3rd ed. is available on-line or can be purchased as a book.
  • User Manuals
    • Documentation for Sun's Java tools is here.
    • The standard Java library (API) is documented here.
  • Tutorials
    • There are dozens of introductory books on Java, and the original one isn't bad:
      Ken Arnold, James Gosling, and David Holmes,The Java Programming Language, 4th ed., Addison--Wesley, 2005. (earlier editions are also fine).
    • If you're not familiar with object-oriented programming, you might want to use a book that emphasizes this aspect of Java. One book I like is
      Bruce Eckel, Thinking in Java, 3rd ed., Prentice-Hall, 2002.
      This book is available free on the web from here. But note that it only describes Java 1.4; a 4th edition, which describes Java 1.5/6, is now available too, for a price.
    • There are also many tutorials on the net, such as Sun's own tutorial.
  • Implementations
    A free implementation for linux or Windows is available from Sun. MacOS X has Java pre-bundled.
• Standard ML
  • Language Reference
    The official definition is fascinating but unlikely to help you write programs:
    R. Milner, M. Tofte, R. Harper, D. MacQueen, The Definition of Standard ML (Revised), MIT Press, 1997.
  • User Manuals
    • Documentation on how to use Standard ML of New Jersey and its libraries are here.
    • Documentation for using Moscow ML and its libraries can be found on the Moscow ML homepage.
  • Tutorials
    • There are some good on-line tutorials; SML of NJ maintains this index of them.
    • I can also recommend these books:
      • Larry Paulson, ML for the Working Programmer, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 1996.
      • Matthias Felleisen and Daniel P. Friedman, The Little MLer, MIT Press, 1998.
  • Implementations
    • A light-weight linux or windows implementation can be downloaded from Moscow ML. Use the "-P full" option to get full libraries.
    • A more resource-consuming version (which produces faster executables) is available from Standard ML of New Jersey.