CS558 Programming Languages Winter 2021

Instructor: Andrew Tolmach

• Email: tolmach@pdx.edu
• Office Hours: on zoom; please email for an appointment.

Course Information

• Zoom course meeting site (Contact instructor for password.)
• Syllabus
• Weblab CS558 course entry page (see enrollment instructions in syllabus)
• Slack channel (lightly 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.
• Initial One-on-one Zoom Meetings sign-up sheet

Exams

• Midterm will cover all material presented in lectures 1a,1b,2a,2b,3a,3b,4a, in required reading through Jan. 26, or in labs due up through Feb. 2.
• Midterm will be conducted using WebLab on Feb. 4. The exam will be available for you to take between 9am and 11pm PDT. You may choose to start the exam at any time within that window. Once you start the exam, you must complete it within 4 hours (or by 11pm, whichever comes first). The exam is "open-book;" you may use the text, your notes, past WebLab assignments, and any other reference materials you want to complete it. However, you must not collaborate, share answers, or otherwise get help from anyone. There will be a mandatory one-on-one zoom session with the instructor to discuss the exam: sign-up sheet
• Practice midterm questions and sample solutions.

  Schedule

  Subject to change!
  
  

  Date	Lab Due	Reading	Lecture Topics	Self-study
  Jan 5		Scott 1	Introduction; High-level vs. low-level languages; Stack machines (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
  Jan 7		Scott 2.1,6.1	Concrete and abstract syntax; Grammars; Expressions (pdf) (recording [missing first few minutes])	questions answers
  Jan 12	Lab 1	Scott 6.2-5	Imperative languages; Structured programming (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
  Jan 14		Gordon, pp. 7-27	Semantics; Axiomatic semantics (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
  Jan 19	Lab 2	Scott 3.1-3,3.5	Binding; Scope (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
  Jan 21		(none)	Memory; Large values; Equality (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
  Jan 26	Lab 3	Winskel 2.1-5	Operational Semantics (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
  Jan 28		Scott 9.1-3, Scott 6.6	Procedures and the stack; Calling conventions; Recursion (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
  Feb 2	Lab 4	(sample midterm questions)	Review for Midterm (recording)	questions answers
  Feb 4			Midterm Exam: no class
  Feb 9		Scott 9.4-5	[Completion of Jan 28 lecture](recording)	questions answers
  Feb 11		(Scott 9.4-5)	Exceptions; Coroutines (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
  Feb 18	Lab 5	Scott 3.6-7, Scott 11	Functional programming; First-class functions (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
  Feb 18 continued (no live class; recording only)		(none)	Closures; Continuations (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
  Feb 23		Scott 7	Type systems; Type checking; Type equivalence (pdf) (recording)	questions answers
  Feb 25	Lab 6	(none)	Polymorphism; Type inference (pdf) (handout with slide 8 method details) (recording)	questions answers
  Mar 2		Scott 8	Composite types (pdf) (recording) TypesInHaskell.hs TypesInHaskell_with_solutions.hs	questions answers
  Mar 4	Lab 7	(none)	Modules; Abstract data types (pdf) (recording)	(no study questions)
  Mar 9		Scott 10	Object-oriented languages
  Mar 11	Lab 8		Review and catch-up
  Mar 15-19			Final exam week

  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.
    • Author's errata page.
    • Companion site containing the additional content referenced in the "In More Depth" sections of the book.
  • Strongly Recommended: Odersky, Spoon, and Venners, Programming in Scala, 1st edition. (Or you can buy the 2nd or 3rd edition.)

  Additional Required Reading

  • For Jan. 14: Mike Gordon, Background reading on Hoare Logic, pp. 7-27 (i.e. up through Section 2.1.8).
  • For Jan. 26: Glynn Winskel, Sections 2.1-5 of "The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages," MIT Press, 1994. (Use username cs558 and the password provided in class and on WebLab.)

  Scala Language Resources

  We will be using Scala 2.12 in the labs for this course. The lastest version is 2.13; this will probably also work OK, but it is safest to stick to 2.12 to make sure programs behave the same way for everyone.
  • Recommended book Programming in Scala (1st edition) by Odersky, Spoon, and Venners. (Although this is a bit out of date with respect to current versions of the language, it should be sufficient for this course.)
  • Scala 2.12 is automatically used inside WebLab.
  • Scala is available on the CS linuxlab machines as scala (interactive interpreter) or scalac (compiler). By default, you'll get version 2.11.6, but version 2.12.3 is available by using addpkg (in which case you should add java8 as well).
  • Official Scala website and documentation
  • Version 2.12.12 can be downloaded from here
  • Version 2.12.12 Scala Library API documentation
  • Our Scala SExprLibrary code for interpreter exercises. (Useful if you want to do development outside WebLab.)