Fundamentals of Programming Languages
CSCI 5535, Fall 2001

• Administrivia: instructor and grader information; office hours
• Exams: dates
• Course strategy and goals: what you will get out of this course
• Course requirements: description of requirements and breakdown of points
• Submitting assignments: how to submit your assignment
• Text: texts that we will use
• Plagiarism policy
• Mailing list: how to get on the class mailing list and post messages to it
• List of topics: syllabus including readings and slides for each class
• Homework: description of homework assignments
• Resources: books/web-resources that may be useful

Administrivia

Exams

• Midterm 1: October 15th
• Midterm 2: November 12th. 
• Final exam: December 18th, 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.

Course strategy and goals

• How to make the most effective use of language features in the languages you already use;
• Teach yourself new languages with relative ease;
• Evaluate the suitability of a language for a given task;

The course will present the material at three levels:

1. The first level will introduce important fundamental concepts that are common across several programming languages.  These concepts include types, polymorphism, dynamic memory management, and control flow constructs.
2. The second level will discuss how languages such as Java, Modula-3, SML, Smalltalk, and C++ implement these concepts.
3. The third level will discuss the implications of how languages implement these concepts for compiler and run-time system.

We will use case studies from a wide variety of languages, including both languages in common use and languages that are research prototypes.  This course will assume that you have already taken CSCI-3155 or equivalent.

Course requirements

The class participation component applies only to in-class students.   It involves the following:

• Each student should bring a piece of paper with a question about the day's assigned reading.  Questions should be specific: i.e., vague questions such as "I didn't understand the reading, can you explain it?" are not acceptable. I will either answer these questions electronically or via email to the entire class.  If you fully understand the reading and do not have a question, then make up a quiz question on the reading.  I may use your question in an exam!  
• Participation in the "discussion" classes.
• Asking/answering questions, raising issues during class.

Submitting assignments

All assignments and exams must be done on time except in the case of emergency.  

On-campus students must submit all assignments on paper in class on the due date.  

Off-campus students have exactly seven extra days to submit their assignment.  For example, if an assignment is due for on-campus students on September 5th in class, then it is due for off-campus students on September 12th by 1:50 p.m. (the end of class time).  Off-campus students can email their assignment as an attachment to the grader in either text, Microsoft Word, or PDF format.  Please don't use any other formats.  In the subject of your email you must give your name and identify the assignment for which you are submitting a solution.  Please avoid using any exotic fonts which may make it harder for us to print your assignment.  At 6:00 p.m. on the day before an assignment is due our grader will look at all the assignments submitted so far and make sure they are in a format that he can view and print.  If the grader cannot print them, he will contact you via email and you have the option of resubmitting the assignment in an appropriate format.  If you submit your assignment on the due date itself then you will not have the option of resubmitting the assignment if your assignment does not print.  We recommend that at least for the first assignment you should plan to submit it one day early to make sure that we can extract and print your assignment.

Text

As mentioned above, most readings will be from papers and language specifications.  These readings are always compulsory.  When the reading is available on-line, I have a link to its on-line location.  However, some of these readings are not available on-line: I will distribute hard copies of these readings.

Plagiarism policy

Mailing list

List of topics

Homework

Resources

You can access slides and other materials from this course in 1999 and 2000.  I recommend using the exams and assignments in the previous years to prepare for your exams.