CS558 Programming Languages Fall 2025

Instructor: Andrew Tolmach

Email: tolmach@pdx.edu
Office Hours: by appointment (in person or on zoom)

Course Information

Live meeting room: Fourth Avenue Building (FAB) 150.
Syllabus
WebLab CS558 course entry page (see enrollment instructions in syllabus)
Slack channel (monitored by instructor) Note: the first time you use this link, it will take you to the general page for the pdx-cs workspace; you need to sign in to access the cs558-specific channel.
Post-midterm one-on-one Zoom Meetings Sign-up sheet

Exams

Midterm will cover all material presented in lectures 1a,1b,2a,2b,3a,3b,4a,4b (through slide 11) in required reading through Oct. 23 (except Scott 6.6), and in labs 1-4.
Midterm will be conducted in class on Thursday, Oct. 30. You may bring a single one-sided 8.5x11 sheet of handwritten notes. Otherwise, the exam is closed-book, closed-notes. No computers or other electronic devices are allowed.
Practice midterm questions and sample solutions.
Final may cover any material covered in lecture, required reading, or labs. But it will focus primarily on material presented in lectures 4b,4c,6a,6b,7a,7b,8a,9a,10a (through slide 18), in required reading from Oct. 23 onwards, and on labs due from Nov. 11 onwards.
Practice final questions and sample solutions.
Dec. 4 class will be a review session. Email instructor with suggestions for topics to cover.
Final will be conducted in the usual classroom on Thursday, Dec. 11 from 3:40pm-5:30pm. You may bring a single one-sided 8.5x11 sheet of handwritten notes. Otherwise, the exam is closed-book, closed-notes. No computers or other electronic devices are allowed.

Schedule

Subject to change!

Date	Lab Due	Reading	Lecture Topics	Self-study
Sep 30		Scott 1	Introduction; High-level vs. low-level languages; Stack machines (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
Oct 2		Scott 2.1,6.1	Concrete and abstract syntax; Grammars; Expressions (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
Oct 7	Lab 1	Scott 6.2-5	Imperative languages; Structured programming (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
Oct 9		Gordon, pp. 7-27	Semantics; Axiomatic semantics (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
Oct 14	Lab 2	Scott 3.1-3,3.5	Binding; Scope (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
Oct 16		(none)	Memory; Large values; Equality (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
Oct 21	Lab 3	Winskel 2.1-5	Operational Semantics (pdf [revised 10/21/25 12:30pm; 10/28/25 3:10pm]) (recording)	questions answers
Oct 23		Scott 9.1-3, 6.6	Procedures and the stack; Calling Conventions (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
Oct 28	Lab 4	(sample midterm questions)	Review for Midterm (recording)	questions answers
Oct 30			Midterm Exam -- in class
Nov 4		(none)	Recursion (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
Nov 6		Scott 3.6-7, Scott 11	Functional programming; First-class functions (pdf) (recording) (additional lecture recording on folds)	questions answers
Nov 11	Lab 5		Veterans Day - no class - recorded lecture Closures; Continuations (pdf) (recording - ignore empty first of "Total 2 recordings")	questions answers
Nov 13		Scott 7	Type systems; Type checking; Type equivalence (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
Nov 18	Lab 6	(none)	Polymorphism; Type inference (pdf) (handout with slide 8 method details) (recording)	questions answers
Nov 20		Scott 8	Composite types (pdf) TypesInHaskell.hs TypesInHaskell_with_solutions.hs (recording)	questions answers
Nov 25	Lab 7	(none)	Modules; Abstract data types (pdf) (recording)	(no study questions)
Nov 27			Thankgiving Holiday - no class
Dec 2		Scott 10	Object-oriented languages (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
Dec 4	Lab 8	(sample final questions)	Review and catch-up (recording)	questions answers
Dec 11			Final exam 3:40pm-5:30pm

Books

Required: Michael L. Scott, Programming Language Pragmatics, 4th ed., Morgan Kaufmann 2016.
- We will cover much, but not all, of this book. See the schedule for details of which chapters and sections you should read, and by when.
- Use of other editions is at your own risk.
- Author's errata page.
- Companion site containing the additional content referenced in the "In More Depth" sections of the book.
Recommended: Odersky, Spoon, Venners, and Sommers Programming in Scala, 5th edition. (The first edition of this book is available free on line, but unfortunately uses Scala 2 syntax, whereas we will be using Scala 3.)

Additional Required Reading

For Oct 9: Mike Gordon, Background reading on Hoare Logic, pp. 7-27 (i.e. up through Section 2.1.8).
For Oct 21: Glynn Winskel, Sections 2.1-5 of "The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages," MIT Press, 1994.

Scala Language Resources

We will be using Scala 3.3.4 in the labs for this course. The latest version of Scala 3 is 3.7.3; this will probably also work OK, but it is safest to stick to 3.3.4 to make sure programs behave the same way for everyone. Scala 2 is a significantly different language, which you should not try to use for this course; be careful when googling!

Recommended book Programming in Scala, 5th edition by Odersky, Spoon, Venners, and Sommers. (The first edition of this book is available free here but uses outdated Scala 2 syntax.)
Scala 3.3.4 is automatically used inside WebLab.
Scala 3.3.4 is available on the CS linuxlab machines by using addpkg scala3-3.3.4 (information about addpkg). You can then run scala (interactive interpreter) or scalac (compiler) from a shell.
Official Scala website and documentation.
The on-line tour of Scala and Scala 3 Book are worth looking at.
Version 3.3.4 can be downloaded from here.
Version 3.3.4 Scala Library API documentation.
Our Scala SExprLibrary code for interpreter exercises (useful if you want to do development outside WebLab).