Final Exam Study Guide

CS 558 Final Exam Study Guide
• Exceptions
  1. Three uses of exeptions
  2. implementation design choices
  3. implementing exception handlers
  4. differences in excpetion mechanisms in functional and imperative languages.
• Type Systemds
  1. Type checking
  2. Polymorphism
     1. Parametric polymorhism (aka generics)
     2. Ad hoc polymorphism (overloading, Haskell classes)
     3. uses of polymorphism
     4. compilation models for polymorhism.
     5. The role of boxing
  3. Type inference
     1. The role of unification
     2. Polymorphic types and fresh instances
  4. Typing judgements
     • Relationship to observational semantics
     • Viewing them as a program
• User defined types
  1. Abstract Datatypes
     1. The axiomatic approach to ADT semantics
     2. Observational equivalence
     3. Interface v.s. implementation
     4. When does abstraction lead to inefficiencies?
  2. Algebraic Datatypes
  3. Types are characterized by the operations they respond to. What are the three kinds of operations on Algebraic data types?
• Module Systems
  1. Roles of modules systems
  2. O'Caml style modules (Parameterized modules)
  3. Modules in other languages
  4. Dependencies and exports
• Object Oriented Languages
  1. What makes a language object oriented?
  2. What kind of abstraction are objects?
  3. What are the uses of inheritance?
  4. What is a class? Which languages are classe based?
  5. How do OO-languages use dynamic binding?
  6. What is the role of closures in OO-languages
  7. What is overriding? How does it relate to inheritance?
• Garbage Collection
  1. Reference counting systems
  2. Mark and sweep
  3. Stop and copy
  4. Compacting
  5. Two space collectors
  6. Generational colectors
  7. GC components
     1. heap
     2. roots
     3. liveness analysis
  8. Comparing advantages and disadvantages
     1. Analysis of asymptotic behavior
     2. Overheads
     3. Mutation patterns that cause bad behavior
     4. System features that forbid certain kinds of systems