Principles of Programming Languages
CSCI 3155, Spring 2002

Table of contents

• Administrivia
• Course goals
• Text
• Course requirements
• Grading
• Plagiarism policy
• Mailing list
• Calendar
• How to submit assignments
• Interesting links

Administrivia

Course goals

• Understand better the strengths and limitations of languages you use already;
• Teach yourself new languages with relative ease;
• Evaluate the suitability of a language for a given task.

Texts

Course requirements

There will be weekly assignments and several of the assignments will involve programming.  All assignments will be due at 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday (i.e., immediately before class) unless the assignment specifies otherwise.  No extensions will be granted except in the case of emergency, in which case the student must provide appropriate documentation.

There will be two in-class midterm exams.  All exams are closed-book.

Students are responsible for the material covered in the readings, the material covered in the assignments, and the material covered in the lectures.  To get the most out of lectures, I strongly recommend that you do the reading for the class before coming to the lecture.   

Grading

For non-code parts of an assignment/exam, we will consider the following:

• How well your submission answers the questions.  For example, a common mistake  is to give an example when a question asks for an explanation.  An example may be useful in your explanation but it should not take the place of the explanation. 
• How clear is your submission?  If we cannot understand what you are trying to say then we cannot give you points for it.  Try reading your answer aloud to yourself: that is often a great way to identify holes in your reasoning.  

For code parts of an assignment/exam, we will consider the following:

• Does your code correctly handle our test cases?
• The quality of your code (documentation, structuring etc.).  This is particularly important if your code fails on some of our test cases: if your code is clean, well structured and documented, then we will be able to give you partial credit. 

All your grades will be available electronically.  Watch this space for instructions on how to get your grades.

Plagiarism policy

We strongly encourage you to work together in learning the material.  For example, when starting on an assignment, it is perfectly reasonable and encouraged to sit down with other students and discuss the assignment and help each other understand the material needed for the assignment.  You should, however, write up (or code up) the assignment separately.  In your submission you should clearly indicate which students helped you in the assignment and on what questions.  Similarly, if you include any text, code, or figure from any source in your submitted work you should cite the original source at the point of the quotation..

Mailing list

Most students should already be signed up for the class mailing list.  If you registered late,  please fill out this form. To avoid duplicate messages, please make sure you are not already on the list.  Feel free to post any relevant question/opinions to this mailing list by sending mail to: 3155disc@cs.colorado.edu.  I often post important and time-critical announcements to this list so please make sure you get on it as soon as possible.  You can get to the archives of this mailing list by clicking on the "archives" link on http://www.cs.colorado.edu/mailman/listinfo/3155disc

Calendar

Date	Topic	Reading
1/15	What are programming languages and why should we study them?	Chapter 1 except 1.6
1/17	Syntax and semantics	Sections 2.1, 2.2 (skip denotational semantics disc. on pages 44 and 45)
1/22	Assignment 1 due
1/22	Variables and scopes	Section 2.3
1/25	Routines and parameters	Sections 2.4 and 2.5
1/29	Assignment 2 due
1/29	Stack memory management	Sections 2.6 and 2.7 (upto and including 2.7.3)
1/31	Block structure	2.7.4, 2.7.5, 2.7.6
2/5	Programming assignment 1 due
2/5	Parameter passing mechanisms	2.7.7
2/9	Types and type constructors	3.1, 3.2, 3.3 (excluding 3.3.2)
2/12	Assignment 3 due
2/12	Type systems	3.4, 3.5
2/12	Optional assignment
2/19	Midterm 1	Cumulative
2/21	Implementation models	3.6
2/26	Control structures	Chapter 4 up to and including 4.3
2/26	Prog. assign 2 stage 1
2/28	Exception handling	4.4 (except 4.4.1, and sidebar "Exception handling in CLU")
3/5	Pattern matching	4.5
3/5	Assignment 4 due
3/5	Prog. assign 2 stage 2
3/7	Programming in the large	5.1, 5.2, 5.3 (except 5.3.4)
3/12	Generics	5.4
3/12	Prog. assign 2 stage 3
3/14	O-O programming languages	6.1
3/19	More O-O programming languages	6.2
3/19	Assignment 5 due
3/21	More O-O programming languages
4/02	Prog. assign 3 stage 1 due
4/02	Inheritance and interfaces	6.3.5 (except 6.3.5.6)
4/04	Midterm 2	Cumulative
4/09	Smalltalk	6.3.4
4/09	Prog. assign 3 stage 2 due
4/11	Functional languages	7 (up to and including 7.2)
4/16	Prog. assign 3 stage 3 due
4/16	Functional languages continued	7.3
4/18	Functional languages continued	7.3
4/23	SML	7.4.3
4/23	Prog. assign 4, stage 1 due
4/30	Prog. assign 4, stage 2 due
4/30	Insights into language design	"How the language got its spots" (handout)
4/02	Review

How to submit assignments

All assignments, whether text or code should be submitted electronically.   Following are directions for submitting text assignments.  The instructions for programming assignments will be provided with the assignments themselves.

• Click here to access the submission page.
• Log in using your login name (this is the same one you use to log in to CU machines) and password (the password is initialized to the last 5 digits of your student ID).  Use csci3155 as the course.  All students that were registered by 10th Jan are already in the system.  If you registered after that, please send mail to the instructor or TA with your information (student id, email, first name, last name).
• Click on the assignment you want to work on in "Pick the assignment you want to work on".  If it is an old assignment and you want to see your grade, click on that assignment in the "Pick an assignment to view feedback".
• Click on "fill out form" (this is to be used for all text assignments.  "write code" is for coding assignments).
• On this page you will have a text window for each question.  For each question, we identify it by giving the first line of the question.  You will need to look at the assignment description to see the full question.  
• Paste your solution in text format to each question and click on "submit".  Note that you can also type your solution directly into the forms rather than pasting it in.  However, the advantage of the pasting is that you will have another copy of your solution on your local machine in case there is a web or network problem.

Some useful things to know about online submission

• The submission system will time out your session if you have been idle for one hour.  "idle" means that you have not clicked on any link or button (NOTE: typing does not change your idle status as far as the system is concerned).  This may be a particular issue if you are typing your assignment directly on the form: if you have typed up your assignment but haven't clicked submit or any other button/link for an hour, you may lose your assignment!
• Every time you click on "submit" it saves a copy of your solutions.  You can click it as many times as you want.  Your assignment isn't really "submitted" until the assignment due time passes.
• The system will stop accepting your assignment as soon as the due time passes.  

Interesting links