CSCI 5106: Programming Languages
Spring 2006

Exam Dates and Times

Final Exam: May 11, 2006, 8:00 -- 10:00. a.m.

Online discussion using HyperNews

New Information:

      5/10/2006

• Comments on the grading of HW8 have been put up on the homeworks page.

      5/9/2006

• Xiaochu will have special office hours on May 10 (Wed) from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. in the usual room for office hours. You can pick your graded HW8 up from her then.

• I recalculated the aggregate to include the grades for all the homeworks and the mid term. The weights I used for the different homeworks were the following: HW1 yields 4 points, HW2 and HW3 each yield 8 points, HW4 yields 5 points, HW5 yields 8 points, HW6 yields 4 points, HW7 yields 8 points and HW8 yields 5 points. Looking at the aggregates, if I had to assign a letter grade right now, here is how I might do it: if your total is over 59 you would get some kind of an A, if it is over 50 you would get some kind of B and if it is over 40 you would have some kind of C. I would have to struggle with the cutoffs for the B and C grades at this point, unfortunately. There are a few of you below the 40 point mark at this stage and I am really hoping that you will do well in the exam so that you get above the cutoff for a C in the end.

  The cutoffs I have mentioned are one thing. Please remember that there is a requirement, clearly stated in the first lecture and also described on this page, that all homeworks have to have been submitted for a passing grade.

• Here is the sample final that some of you had requested last Thursday.

      5/5/2006

• Comments on the grading of HW7 have been posted. You will find a link to them on the homeworks page.

      1/16/2006

• Any code written for this course has to be submitted electronically as an accompaniment for hard copy submissions. Details on the protocol for submissions appear on the homeworks page. Instructions for submitting code electronically appear here.

Table of Contents

• Contact Information
• Prerequisites
• Required Text and Reference Books
• Course Description
• Outline of Topics
• Required Work and Grading
• Academic Honesty
• Software Information and Documentation
• Homeworks for Spring 2006
• Handouts for Spring 2006

Contact Information

• Lecture Times and Place: TTh 2:30 - 3:45 p.m., EE/CSci Building, Room 3-125.

• Instructor: Gopalan Nadathur (gopalan@cs.umn.edu), EE/CSci 6-215, 612-626-1354.
  Office Hours: T 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m., Th 4:00 - 5:00 p.m.

• Teaching Assistant: Xiaochu Qi, (xqi@cs.umn.edu)
  Office Hours: M 4:00 - 5:00 p.m.
  Room: EE/CSci 2-209, 612-626-7512.

Course Prerequisites

Course Text

You will be reading a few research/expository papers during the term. These should be available in the form of a bulk pack from the bookstore before the start of the term. You should try to get the bulk pack as soon as possible: the first homework requires you to read a couple of papers in this pack.

Finally, there is an optional text: Elements of ML Programming, J.D. Ullman, ISBN 0-13-790387-1. This book is useful if you want to learn more about ML and, thereby, about functional programming languages in general. This book will not be available at the bookstore, but you can order it electronically from many places.

When purchasing the text, you may want to look around on the Web to be sure that you are paying a reasonable price. A couple of places that you might try are http://www.dealtime.com and http://www.bookpool.com. (If you have found specific other places with better prices on the books for this course, let me know and I will add a link here.)

Course Description and Objectives

Outline of Topics

• Introduction. The nature of programming languages and the forces that shape them. (Chapter 1.)

• Dealing with syntax. The description of syntax, the extraction of syntactic structure from text and the representation of such structure. (Chapter 2.)

• Imperative programming. Computation based on state change, the need for structured control flow constructs, reasoning about programs with such constructs; data types; procedures, parameter passing mechanisms and scope rules, implementation issues; data abstraction, information hiding and modularity. (Chapters 3--6.)

• Object-oriented programming. The notion of an object, object-oriented thinking, issues such as inheritance and classes, information hiding. (Chapters 6--7.)

• Functional programming. Model of computation based on expression evaluation. Higher-order programming, approaches to expression evaluation, lazy evaluation and infinite structures, polymorphic typing, type checking and type inference. (Chapters 8-10, material from Chapter 14.)

• Logic Programming. Programming through specifying and enquiring about relationships. Unification and search as mechanisms for computing. Applications of the paradigm. Procedural issues related to search, aspects such as cut and negation-by-failure. (Chapter 11.)

• Concurrent Programming. Issues in concurrency and their reflection in programming language constructs. (Chapter 12.)

Required Work and Grading

Lectures will often cover material not directly available from the book. You will be responsible for this material as well. I may sometimes provide supplementary written material or papers, but I cannot do this all the time. Attending lectures and keeping abreast of discussions is therefore very important. Students who have not done this have had difficulty with the course in the past.

Half the grade for the course will be determined by homework assignments and the other half by exams. Assignments will be given roughly every other week. Homework must be turned in on the due date before the start of class. Late homeworks will, in general, not be accepted. While each homework will contribute a specific amount to the final grade, you are expected to turn in all of them to obtain a passing grade in the course.

There will be two exams, a mid term and a final. The mid term is scheduled for March 7, 2006 and the final for 8:00-10:00 a.m. May 11, 2006. The midterm will account for 40% of the exam grade (i.e. 20% of the overall grade) and the final will account for 60% of the exam grade (i.e. 30% of the overall grade).

Issues such as presentation elegance, clarity and conciseness of expression and the insights offered will be taken into account in grading. The Web page for homeworks discusses these points in more detail and also explains matters of protocol.

You are encouraged to participate in discussions, both in class and over HyperNews. While no specific role is assigned to this in grade determination, it could have an intangible effect, such as in settling borderline cases.

And a word about collaboration and outside help. Insofar as this serves in improving your understanding of the course material, it is actually encouraged. However, you are expected to do all the work that counts towards your grade completely independently.

This course will expect most of you to learn new things. In particular, you will encounter new languages and new ways of thinking about programs. Moreover, the focus will be on things that have a long term impact on your understanding. Thus, we will not really be discussing how to program in Java, C++ or some other language but, rather, how to think about programs and the devices available in these and other languages. You may feel diffident at times doing this---all of us have an initial desire to stay with familiar things---but it can be very rewarding in the end. Also, you should know that the TA and the instructor will give you needed assistance so long as you also make the effort.

Academic Honesty

This being said, I expect the work that each of you turn in for a grade to be representative of your independent thinking. You may discuss assignments with each other to the extent that this clarifies your understanding of what is being asked, but this discussion must stop before it gets anywhere near the details of a solution. If you need help at this point, you should seek this from me or the teaching assistant and we can decide what is and is not appropriate. In a similar vein, it is not acceptable to simply reproduce solutions to problems that you obtain from someone outside of class.

There will be penalties for breaches of this policy, ranging from no credit for the work in question to a failing grade in the course. On a more personal note, this kind of dishonesty interferes seriously with your own ability to learn and so there is no benefit to it in the long run.