Allyson M. Hoss,

January 14, 2008

CSC 7101 Programming Language Structures

Spring 2008

Louisiana State University

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CSC 7101 Programming Language Structures

• Introduction

• Syllabus

• Paper & Presentation

• Overview

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Instructor: Allyson M. Hoss

Office: SE Lab, Coates Hall 162

Hours: Monday 1:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Other times by appointment

Phone: 578-1406 (M 1:30-4:30pm)

Email (preferred): ahoss1@lsu.edu

CSC 7101 Programming Language Structures

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Who

What

When

Where

How

Why

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Introduction

• Who …….. Name?

• What ……. PhD or Masters?

• Why …….. Love of PL, General Exam, …?

• When …… take General Exam?

• Where ….. Academia or Industry?

• How …….. Many papers have you written

in CSC?

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CSC 7101 Programming Language Structures

• Introduction

• Syllabus

• Paper & Presentation

• Overview

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CSC 7101 Programming Language Structures

Objectives Learn formal models of programming language

syntax and semantics

  Understand construction of correct programs and their verification

  Explore language design issues

  Research current topics in programming language

  Improve research writing and presenting skills

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CSC 7101 Programming Language Structures

• Introduction

• Syllabus

• Paper & Presentation

• Overview

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Paper and Presentation

• Select a research topic in programming languages

search the Web for open issues & research directions

explore what interests you

• write a summary paper approximately 10 pages double-spaced

5-8 sources (3 major; 3 recent)

• give an oral presentation 15 minutes

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Paper and Presentation

Staged DeliveryTopic & References: January 28th

Outline: February 11th

Initial Slides: March 24th

Final Slides & Paper: April 7th

Presentation: April 7th - 28th

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CSC 7101 Programming Language Structures

• Introduction

• Syllabus

• Paper & Presentation

• Overview

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Overview

What is a Programming Language?

“notational system intended primarily to

facilitate human-machine interaction” [Schalkoff07]

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Basic Forth Awk

Python Eiffel APL Lisp

HTML ML Ada

JavaScript Logo

VBScript dBASE

MATLAB APL SNOBOL

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Top 10 Most Popular

1967Algol 60, APL, Basic, BCPL, COBOL,

Fortran IV, Lisp 1.5, PL/I, Simula 67, SNOBOL

2007Java, C, Visual Basic, C++, PHP, Perl, C#,

Python, JavaScript, Ruby

[TIOBE Programming Community Index; www.tiobe.com]

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Overview

• Why Study PL? language features or capabilities to speed

development learn new languages more quickly and

efficiently understand underlying implementation issues modify or design new languages

Obtained from [Shalkoff 07]

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Overview

• Why Study PL?

• To help answer questions such as: How do you choose a PL? How do you tell someone about a PL? How do you describe what a program does? How do you describe what a program is supposed to do?

Obtained from [Shalkoff 07]

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Overview

• Programming Language Paradigms

Procedural or Imperative (C, C++, Java) Functional (Lisp, Scheme, ML) Declarative or Logic (Prolog) Object-oriented (Java, C++, Eiffel)

Rule-based, Event-driven, Parallel or Concurrent,Scripting, Markup, Specification, Assembly, Visual, …

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Overview

FORMAL FORMAL

SYNTAX SEMANTICS

Static Dynamic

BNF attribute grammars operational

(Backus axiomatic

Naur denotational

Form)

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Overview

• Functional Programming & Lambda Calculus ML (Meta-Language)

• Logic Programming Prolog

• Type Systems static vs dynamic strongly vs weakly typed monomorphism vs polymorphism coercions, overloading

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Assignment # 1 Due January 28th

Reading – 3 Papers:“On Understanding Types, Data Abstraction, and Polymorphism”

“The Semicolon Wars”

“Software and the Future of Programming Languages” 

Research Paper:

Describe your chosen research topic

List sourcesTopics must be unique - approved on a FCFS

(You can email me this information before the due date)

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No

Class

Next Week