Week 2

Exercise 0 is an unassessed warm-up exercise for this week.

Reading Material

• Main text book: John Mitchell, Concepts in Programming Languages, Link to Stanford course
• Additional reading: Michael Scott: Programming Language Pragmatics (any edition).
• Richard Bird and Philip Wadler, Introduction to Functional Programming (1988)
• Zohar Manna, Mathematical Theory of Computation (any edition)
• Reading list at the library
• Peerwise question-answer site. Click the "registration" link to create your account, and access "Principles of Prog Langs 2012" module by entering
  • Course ID = 6699
  • Identifier = your student ID

Lecture Notes and Exercises

• induction lecture
• General Information handout
  
  
• Computational Mechanisms
  • Introduction, Haskell programming language
    • Lecture slides, 27 Sep. Powerpoint, PDF.
    • Exercise 0: Foundations of functional programming, 7 Oct 2013.
    • Chapter 5: Introduction to Haskell from Concepts in Programming Languages.
    • HaskellWiki - Lots of good examples of Haskell programs and explanations.
    • Examples from the lectures
  • Specification and verification of functional programs
    • Handout 1: Specification and verification of functional programs, 15 Oct.
    • Reading assignment: Chapter 4 of the Mitchell text. (Skip 4.2 on lambda calculus for now.)
    • Additional Reading: Bird and Wadler text, Chapter 5.
    • Tony Hoare's keynote talk at the CAS conference
  • Specification and verification of imperative programs
    • Handout 2: Specification and verification of imperative programs, 20 Oct.
    • Java documentation on its assertions facility
    • Wikipedia page on assertions library for C
  
  
• Functions and Procedures
  • Higher-order functions (Week 6)
    • Recommended reading: Bird and Wadler text
  • Lambda calculus (Week 7)
    • Handout 10 from Models of Computation (for Review)
    • Handout 4: Introduction to Lambda Calculus
    • Handout 5A: Functional programming and lambda calculus
    • Handout 5B: Imperative programs and lambda calculus
  • Reduction semantics (Week 8)
    • Handout 6: Reduction semantics
  • Lecture Slides for Scope and Storage Management

Lectures

Office hours

Assessment

• Weekly exercises (10%)
• 2 Class tests (10%)
• Final exam (80%)

Staff Details

Other Resources

• Historical development of Programming Languages
  • Programming Languages chapter of Goldstine, H. H., The Computer: from Pascal to von Neumann
  • History of Programming Languages poster by O'Reilly

• Current issues in Programming Languages
  • JaneStreet Capital talk at CMU on functional programming on the Wall Street
  • Google's use of higher-order functions 'map' and 'reduce' (another name for fold)
  • Grand Challenges in Programming Languages (Notes from a conference session: 2009 ACM Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages)
  • Stack Exchange Q&A site for programming language research
  • Why Functional Programming Matters by John Hughes
• Wikipedia pages on topics
  • Haskell programming language
  • ML programming language
• Wikipedia pages on scientists:
  • Euclid and his Elements
  • Diophantus and Diophantine algebra
  • Kurt Godel and primitive recursion
  • Alonzo Church
  • Haskell Curry
  • Peter Landin
  • Christopher Strachey
  • Dana Scott
  • Gordon Plotkin
  • John Reynolds
  • Jean-Yves Girard
• Mathematical Geneology: Alonzo Church, Christopher Strachey
• Fundamental concepts in programming languages by Christopher Strachey (Local access in Birmingham)
• Abelson and Sussman's 'Structure and and Interpretation of Computer Programs' (online edition from MIT Press)

Module Description and Syllabus