Index of this document

• Contact information
• Tutorials
• Course outline
• Calendar of important course-related events
• Evaluation and related policies
• Announcements
• Handouts
• Old exams

Contact information

Email with MIME-encoded or HTML message bodies will not be read nor responded to.

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Tutorials

A bulletin board has also been created for the class, which will be monitored by the TAs.

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Course outline

• (2 weeks) Formal Specification of Programming Languages
• (4 weeks) Functional Programming: CaML
• (3 weeks) Logic Programming: Prolog
• (3 weeks) Design Principles for Programming Languages
• (1 week) Review

We will be using CaML Light, and SWI Prolog.

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Calendar of important course-related events

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Evaluation and related policies

Important note on final: You must pass the final  to pass the course.   In other words, if you receive below a 50% (after curve) on the final exam, you automatically fail the course, regardless of your performance on homeworks and the midterms.

Important note on homeworks: Homeworks will be distributed electronically.  A1 and A2 will be collected only in tutorial or by appointment with the TA for the homework in question.   They will also be returned in tutorial.

Lateness Policy: No late homeworks will be accepted without a signed medical certificate.  With a signed medical certificate, a late outstanding assignment may be ``cancelled'' at the instructor's discretion, in which case the marks for that piece of work will be distributed over the other marked work for the course in weighted proportion to the other work's contribution to the course grade.  A missed midterm will be cancelled, but again only with a signed medical certificate.

Silent policy:  The TA is not obliged to answer questions posed  less than 24 hours before any assignment is due, and is not obliged to answer questions already answered on the newsgroup at any time.  Students are encouraged to use the bulletin board for the course to pose their questions.

Remarking: Homeworks or exams written in pencil or erasable ink will not be remarked.  A request for remarking should be directed to the tutor who marked the assignment.  The tutor is only required to remark once - if you still believe your solution is correct, you may appeal to the instructor.

Policy on collaboration: Collaboration on homeworks and copying from others' homeworks are strictly prohibited - you are permitted to speak only with your tutors and the instructor about the homework.  If challenged by either a tutor or the instructor, you must be able to reproduce and explain any solution you submit in an oral exam.  No student is permitted to discuss any midterm or final exam with any other student until the instructor or TAs provide the solutions to the exam.  Failure to observe this policy is an academic offense, carrying a penalty ranging from a zero on the homework to suspension from the university.

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Announcements

• 5 December: There will be a special review session from 4 to 6pm in BA 1200 on Tuesday, 9th December.  No lecture will be prepared, so come with questions!
• 5 December: MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 12: mode, negation-as-failure, cuts
• 28 November: MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 11: non-monotonic reasoning, recursion in logic programming, choice points.
• 21 November: MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 10: unification.
• 14 November: MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 9: review of the language of first-order logic, terms vs. formulae, typing in Prolog, variable scope in Prolog, reduction theorem-proving, Horn clauses, converting non-Horn formulae into Horn clauses.
• 7 November: MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 8: motivation for typing, record types, type synonyms, function polymorphism, variant types, enumerated types, auxiliary functions, scope, exceptions and exception handling.
• 31 October: MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 7: midterm, flat recursion, mutual recursion, patterns.
• 17 October: ABOUT THE MIDTERM:  this will take place from 8pm to 9pm on 23rd October.  The two hours preceding that will be devoted to reviewing for the exam.  You are responsible for everything that we've covered up through 16th October.  No exam aids are allowed.  You don't need to bring paper, but you do need to bring pens.  Exams written in pencil will not be remarked.
• 17 October: MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 6: maps and reductions, sequential composition, local variables, beta-reduction and beta-expansion, message passing and object-oriented programming in CaML, tail recursion, linear recursion.
• 9 October: MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 5:  conditional expressions and matches, lambda terms, anonymous functions, Currying, higher-order functions, side effects, references in CaML.
• 9 October: MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 4:  constructors and selectors, the unit type,  predicates, values and evaluation, the principles of "pure" functional programming.
• 29 September: MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 3: compilation, typing judgements, parametric types, lists and tuples in CaML.
• 20 September: MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 2: parse trees, ambiguity, context-free languages, Chomsky and Greibach normal forms, levels of programming languages.
• 17 September: The tutorial on 18th September will take place from 8 to 9pm, and the lecture will take place from 6 to 8pm.  This is just a one-time swap - tutorial and lectures will take place at their usual times again beginning on the 25th.
• 17 September:  MATERIAL COVERED IN LECTURE 1:  definition of programming languages, properties of good programming languages and programming environments, context-free grammars.  You should read Chapter 4 through the end of section 1 in Mitchell.
• 11 September :  Please note that the first tutorial is on Thursday, 18 September (before the second lecture).
• 11 September: PREREQUISITES. To take this course you must (1) have successfully completed CSC 207/270 and CSC 236/238/240 or (2) have the permission of the instructor.  You must also either have a CGPA of at least 3.0 or be enrolled in a CSC subject POSt. Note that the University's automatic registration system does not check for prerequisites: even if you have registered into the course, you will not receive credit for it unless you had satisfied the prerequisite by the time you registered. Transfer students and students awaiting rulings on cases of academic misconduct should take special note of this.

Handouts

To view these handouts you will need access to a PDF viewer. If your machine does not have the required software, you can allegedly download it for free.

• Term Marks Breakdown
• Prolog transcript 10
• Prolog transcript 9
• Prolog transcript 8
• Prolog transcript 7
• Prolog transcript 6
• Assignment 3 with solutions
  
• CaML transcript 5
• CaML transcript 4
• Assignment 2 with solutions
• CaML transcript 3
• CaML transcript 2
• CaML transcript 1
• Lecture 2
• Assignment 1 with solutions
• Lecture 1
• Course information
• A neat, though difficult-to-read graphical history of programming languages

Old exams

• Fall 2003 midterm
• Fall 2003 final
• Fall 2004 midterm

Gerald Penn, 6 December, 2008
This web-page was adapted from the web-page for another course, created by Vassos Hadzilacos.