CSE 341: Syllabus, Autumn 2003

CSE 341

Programming Languages

Autumn 2003

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington

Steve Tanimoto (instructor).

Syllabus

Tentative list of topics to be covered:

Overview of programming language families
History of programming languages
Interaction with Lisp
Lisp S-expressions, representation of list structure
Lisp evaluation
Defining functions, recursion
Functional programming with Lisp
Lexical closures and their relation to objects
Defining macros in Lisp
Lazy evaluation
Introduction to ML and its type system
Logic programming theory
PROLOG
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 environments
Visual programming: systems and issues
Scripting languages and Perl introduction
Pattern matching in Perl using Regular Expressions
String interpolation and other features of Perl
CGI programming

Grading -- approximate percentages

Assignments 30%.
Class participation, including in-class exercises and meetings with the instructor: 10%.
Each of Quizzes 1 and 2: 10%.
Project 20%.
Final Exam 20%

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: Course Notes for CSE 341, Autumn 2003 Version Available at RAMS Copy Center, 4144 University Way, N.E. (ask for the "CSE 341 class packet"). The cost is approximately $11.00. (Required reading).
2. Jeffrey Ullman: Elements of ML Programming Available at University Bookstore.
3. Robert Sebesta: A Little Book on Perl Available at University Bookstore.

References on Common Lisp

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

Paul Graham, author of "On Lisp", explains why he does NOT want everyone to learn Lisp.
The online version of Common LISP: The Language.

local copy

An online Lisp applet that let's you try out simple expressions and functions.
Allegro Common Lisp is available on the CSE labs' Windows machines. Or you can register at Franz, Inc., and download a free copy.
A local copy of the online manual for GNU Common Lisp (GCL).

Recursive Functions of Symbolic Expressions and Their Computation by Machine

Communications of the ACM

References on Java (Note that Java is not required in CSE 341 this quarter)

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

ML is available on the instructional Unix machines in the CSE department. We are using a version called "sml" or Standard ML of New Jersey. To use it on a machine such as Fiji, just type

sml

You can download and install ML on either a Windows PC or a Linux system. Visit This page for download links and installation information.
An excellent introduction to ML is the book by Jeffrey Ullman: Elements of ML Programming, published by Prentice-Hall.
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 Prolog and Logic Programming

Prolog Programming by Paul Brna.
Online Guide to Prolog by Roman Bartak. The English is not completely correct, but the introduction is nicely done.

References on Visual Languages

A few VL references are here:

A system called ToonTalk.
The StageCast Creator system. Here's some evidence that StageCast Creator may be Turing-complete.
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 Comprehensive Perl Archive Network.
Tom Christiansen's Perl Language Homepage

An excellent book introducing Perl is Robert Sebesta's A Little Book on Perl.

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.

Miscellaneous: There is a web site where you can see one programming problem solved in over 500 different programming languages. The problem is to print out the words to "99 Bottles of Beer." Since visual languages are missing, here is a visual language solution in StageCast Creator . Maybe it's missing because it solves a different problem: "99 Bottles of Root Beer." (StageCast Creator is intended as a programming language for minors.)