CSE 341: Programming Languages

4.0

Daniel Grossman

Depends on instructor, often relying on free language user's guides, online tutorials, and/or instructor-written reading notes and/or videos

Basic concepts of programming languages, including abstraction mechanisms, types, and scoping. Detailed study of several different programming paradigms, such as functional, object-oriented, and logic programming. No credit if CSE 413 has been taken.

CSE 143.

Selected Elective

To understand fundamental programming-language concepts
To become fluent in non-imperative programming paradigms
To become able to learn new programming languages efficiently

(a) an ability to apply knowledge of mathematics, science, and engineering
(i) a recognition of the need for, and an ability to engage in life-long learning

The following topics are always covered:
- functional programming (avoiding mutation; exploiting recursion and higher-order functions; closures; anonymous functions)
- algebraic datatypes and pattern-matching
- essential object-oriented programming (late-binding / dynamic dispatch, subtyping vs. subclassing)
- language support for abstraction, such as modules, abstract types, and dynamic type-creation
- syntax vs. semantics
- static vs. dynamic typing
- parametric polymorphism / generics
- object-oriented extensibility vs. functional extensibility
In any particular offering, most of the following are covered:
- tail recursion
- currying
- equality vs. identity
- macros
- type inference
- lazy evaluation and related idioms such as streams and memoization
- code-as-data concepts, such as reflection and eval/apply
- lexical vs. dynamic scope
- subtyping issues such as structural vs. named subtyping and sumpsumption vs. coercion
- object-oriented concepts such as multiple inheritance, multimethods, and metaclasses
- bounded parametric polymorphism
- forms of parameter passing
- subtype polymorphism and bounded polymorphism
- logic programming
A small number of these topics might also be covered:
- language-design principles
- history of programming languages
- programming environments
- debugging support
- compilers vs. interpreters
- continuations
- continuation-passing style
- coroutines
- iterators
- language support for concurrency