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Principles of Programming Languages (2007)

Vrije Universiteit, Dept. of Computer Science, Amsterdam

Course description

• Instructor: dr. Natalia Silvis-Cividjian (nsilvisATfew.vu.nl)
• Credit points: 4 ECTS (FEW 400166)
• Duration: 13 weeks; starts September, 3, 2007
• Structure: 11 lectures and 2 presentation sessions
• Time and place: Fridays, 11:00-12:45, in C121
• Textbook: Modern Programming Languages: A Practical Introduction, by Adam Brooks Webber.  Franklin, Beedle & Associates.  (2003), available at STORM
• Assesment: A compulsory assignment and a written exam. As assignment the students have to evaluate a less familiar programming language. A written report and an in-class presentation are required. A passed exam is only valid in combination with a passed assignment. The deadline for the written report is Dec 1, 2007. The presentation is scheduled for Friday 30 Nov 2007. The exam is scheduled on 19th December 2007 8:45-11:30.

Tentative Schedule

Week 1
Sep 7: Introduction. History of programming languages
Readings: Weber Ch. 1, 24, Sebesta Ch.2 [opt]
Programming languages diagram [bmp] A nice coloured poster from O'Reilly can be found in bookshops (Computer Collectief Amsterdam for example)
The history of Programming Languages Lecture 1 slides [pdf]

Week 2
Sep 14: Syntax and semantics
Readings: Weber Ch. 2, 3
Lecture 2 slides [pdf]

Week 3
Sep 28: Language systems. Functional programming: ML 1
Readings:Weber Ch. 4, 5
Lecture 3 slides [pdf]

Week 4
Oct 5: Types. Functional programming: ML 2
Readings:Weber Ch. 6,7
Studied articles:

• Strong vs. Weak typing, an interview with Guido van Rossum
• James Gosling on Java, an interview with James Gosling

Week 5
Oct 12: Polymorphism. Functional programming: ML 3
Readings: Weber Ch. 8,9
Articles:

• On Understanding Types, Data abstraction, and Polymorphism by L. Cardelli and P. Wagner

Week 6
Oct 19: Scope. Memory management
Readings: Weber Ch. 10, 12, 14 Lecture 6 slides: [pdf]

Week 7
Nov. 2: Control abstraction. Parameters. Exceptions.
Reading: Weber Ch. 17,18
Lecture 7 slides : [pdf]

Week 8
Nov. 9: Logic programming: Prolog
Reading: Weber Ch. 19,20
Lecture 8 slides : [pdf]
Some Prolog examples
More Prolog examples

Week 9 Nov. 16: Object orientation. Scripting languages: Python 1
Readings: Weber Ch. 15,16. Scott Ch.13 [opt]
11:00-11:45 in C121
12:00-13:00 in S345 computer lab
Lecture 9 slides : [pdf]
Python tutorials:

• Python Tutorial, by Guido van Rossum
• Instant Python, by Magnus Lie Hetland
• A byte of Python, by Swaroop C.H.
• Python 101, by Dave Kuhlman
• Software carpentry, by Greg Wilson (the Python chapters)
• A short tutorial for IDLE

Week 10 Nov. 23: Scripting languages: Python 2. Exam guidelines.
Readings: slides
Lecture 10 slides : [pdf]
Articles:

• Scripting : Higher Level Programming for the 21st Century, by J.K. Ousterhout
• Scripting language survey, Tejas Sofwtare Consulting

Week 11 Nov. 30: Student presentations

Week 12 Dec. 7: Student presentations

Week 13 Dec 14: Guest lectures. Haskell: Russell O'Connor, Radboud University Nijmegen, Python: Dick Kniep, Lindix BV, C#: Wouter Mooij, Basket Builders

Course documents

• The assignment

  The assignment text can be found here .
  Here is the list with the languages currently assigned .
  Please mail me your language choice. No more than 3 persons can work on one language. So the first-come-first-served algorithm is applied.
  Some links and articles that might help:
  • Features and misfeatures of Programming languages
  • Programming language comparison
  • The ACM "Hello World" Project
  • An implementation of the heapsort in Java

• Language resources

  • VU machine access
    Some compilers are already installed on the FEW Linux machines. More .
    If in order to accomplish your assignment you need to install other compilers please mail me.
  • For ML, Java and Prolog resources see Adam Weber's book website:
  • For Python resources see the Python homepage .
  • To run the examples in C++, please read the C/C++ practical guide
  • Other languages implementations:
    • Hugs, a Haskell implementation
    • A Ruby implementation
    • Dr. Scheme, a Scheme implementation

• Suplemmentary references (available in the FEW library):

  General

  • H. Bal, D. Grune, Programming languages essentials, Addison-Wesley, 1994
  • R. Sebesta, Concepts of Programming languages, Pearson Education/Addison Wesley, 2005
  • M. Scott, Programming Language pragmatics, Morgan Kaufmann, 2005
  • R.G. Clarck, Comparative programming languages, Addison-Wesley, 2001

  Different programming languages

  • J.D. Ullman, Elements of ML programming, Prentice Hall, 1994
  • S. Thompson, Haskell, The craft of functional programming, Addison Wesley (Pearson Education), 1999
  • R.K. Dybvig, The Scheme programming language, MIT Press, 2003 (available on-line)
  • M. Lutz and D. Ascher, Learning Python, O'Reilly, 2004
  • M. Pilgrim, Dive into Python, (free book download)
  • D. Thomas, Programming Ruby, The Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2005

• Articles:

  • The Plankalkul of Konrad Zuse: A Forerunner of Today's Programming Languages
  • An empirical comparison of C, C++, Java, Perl, Phyton, Rexx and Tcl
  • Strong vs. Weak typing, an interview with Guido van Rossum
  • A conversation with Guido van Rossum about Python
  • James Gosling on Java, an interview with James Gosling
  • On Understanding Types, Data abstraction, and Polymorphism by L. Cardelli and P. Wagner
  • Scripting : Higher Level Programming for the 21st Century, by J.K. Ousterhout
  • Growing a language, by Guy Steele
  • Performance of Java versus C++

• Interesting links:

  • Adam Weber's book website:
  • History of programming languages by Eric Lenevez
  • Java language specification by James Gosling
  • An introduction to programming languages by Andrew Cooke

• The language design trade-offs list

  After each lecture we will update the list of trade-offs in language design and implementation.

• Exam

  • Exam guidelines
  • A sample exam paper and a solution

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  Announcements

  • Announcements