CSE 341: Syllabus, Autumn 2002

CSE 341

Programming Languages

Autumn 2002

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington

Steve Tanimoto (instructor), Richard Cox and Jeff West (teaching assistants).

Syllabus

(most recently updated on 3 November 2002)

Tentative list of topics to be covered:

Overview of programming language families
History of programming languages
Interaction with Scheme
Scheme S-expressions, representation of list structure
Scheme evaluation
Defining functions, recursion
Functional programming with Scheme
Lexical closures and their relation to objects
Defining macros in Scheme
Lazy evaluation and continuations
Introduction to ML and its type system
The object-oriented approach
Java classes and instances
Java AWT
Java threads
Describing programming language syntax using Backus-Naur Form and Extended Backus-Naur Form
Type systems, strong typing, type inference, polymorphism
Language design issues. Core vs libraries, orthogonality, programming environment
Visual programming: systems and issues
Scripting languages and Perl introduction
Pattern matching in Perl
String interpolation and other features of Perl
CGI programming

Grading -- approximate percentages

Each of Assignments 1, 3, 4, 5: 4%. Assignment 2: 9%.
Class participation, including in-class exercises and meetings with the instructor: 5%.
Each of Quizzes 1 and 2: 10%.
Group Project 25%.
Final Exam 25%

Late Policy for Homework

Unless otherwise noted, if an assignment is turned in after the beginning of the class at which the assignment is due, but within one hour of the deadline, 10% off. Between 1 hour and 1 day late, 15% off. Between 1 day and 1 week late, 20% off. After 1 week late, 10% per additional week late.

Policy on Collaboration

WARNING: Unless indicated otherwise in writing, each assignment is to be done by each student individually and independently. Students are encouraged to study together and help each other in debugging. However, sharing a solution with another student before the assignment is due or looking at someone else's solution and subsequently modifying your own before the assignment is due is inappropriate. Student solutions judged by the TA and instructor to be suspiciously similar may lead to prosecution under the College of Engineering's policy on academic misconduct.

Texts

1. Steven Tanimoto: Scheming on the Web: A Primer on Scheme and Creating Intelligent Web Content (Scheme Notes for CSE 341, Sept. 2002).

2. Patrick Niemeyer and Jonathan Knudsen: Learning Java. O'Reilly, 2000. (available at the University Bookstore).

3. Robert W. Sebesta A Little Book on PerlPrentice-Hall, 2000. (available at the University Bookstore).

References on Scheme

There are a number of online resources for Scheme. Here are some of them.

"An improper list of Scheme resources" at www.schemers.org
A book that introduces programming itself that happens to use Scheme: How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Computing and Programming
The DR Scheme web site. This includes a link to the free download page. DR Scheme is a beginner-friendly environment for learning and programming in Scheme.
An official language reference for Scheme is the Revised(4) Report on the Algorithmic Language Scheme
Paul Graham, author of "On Lisp", explains why he does NOT want everyone to learn Lisp.

References on Java

Here are some Java references to help you get started.
BlueJ is an interactive development environment for learning Java. Windows and Macintosh versions can be freely downloaded from the BlueJ web site. It requires that you have the Sun Java Development Kit (version 1.3 or higher) installed on your computer. A Tutorial can also be found at this web site.
Here's the Java online documentation (for the JDK 1.1 version).

References on ML

You can download and install ML on either a Windows PC or a Linux system. Visit This page for download links and installation information.
Robert Harper at Carnegie-Mellon University has posted a nice tutorial introduction to ML. A slightly old HTML version is here. He also has a large downloadable document with a more recent version.
Here's the book A Gentle Introduction to ML by Andrew Cumming at Napier Univ.
I have written an ML program that generates theorems of the propositional logic. Here is the source file..

References on Visual Languages

A few VL references are here:

A system called ToonTalk.
The StageCast Creator system
Info about a conference on this subject that took place in Seattle in 2000.

References on Perl

Here are a few of the many online resources for Perl:

The Perl Institute web site.
The University of Florida Perl Archive
Tom Christiansen's Perl Language Homepage

Course Mailing List:

Our email list is: cse341@cs.washington.edu
The archive is here.

General References on Unix and HTML

For those of you who are new to Unix, you might like to read the local ACM chapter's tutorial on Unix or look at this web site.

For HTML, you can look at web page sources in Netscape by clicking on View and then selecting Page Source.
You can also read about HTML here.

For information on the Emacs text editor check this local page, which covers the Windows versions. Here's the GNU Emacs online manual.