CMSC 305: Design of Programming Languages

Description: This course will cover a selection of issues important to the design of programming languages including, but not limited to, lexical analysis, parsing, type systems and type checking, procedure activation, parameter passing, data encapsulation, dynamic memory allocation, and module systems. In addition, multiple programming paradigms will be explored. Students will be expected to complete several major programming exercises in a variety of programming languages.

Professor: Robert W. McGrail

Class Meeting: Monday and Wednesday, 3:00-4:20 PM, Reem-Kayden 100

Lab Period: Wednesday, 8:30-10:30 PM, Reem-Kayden 100

Text: Programming Languages: Priciples and Practices, Second Edition. Allen B. Tucker and Robert E. Noonan. McGraw Hill. 2007. ISBN: 0-07-286609-8.

Course Policies

Class Meetings: These will be conducted in traditional lecture style.

Lab Meetings: The laboratory session will always focus on a particular extended exercise.

Exams: There will be two exams. Both exams will carry the same weight toward the final grade.

Grading: The grading breakdown will be as follows.

Homework: 20%
Laboratory Exercises: 50%
Exams: 30%

Syllabus

The following topics will be covered in this course.

Lexical Analysis with ML-lex
Shift/Reduce Parsing and LR(k) Grammars
Type Checking
Semantic Analysis
Language Interpreters
Imperative, Functional, and Object-Oriented Programming
Logic Programming
Constraint Programming

News

Presentations and the Exam
11/14/07 - The dates for student presentations and Exam II

Laboratory Project 6
11/14/07 - Create a Prolog program that solves the following mathematical puzzle. Due Friday, November 30th at 12 Midnight.

Laboratory Project 5
11/7/07 - Construct an SMLLite interpreter. Due Wednesday, November 14th, 2007 at Noon.

Homework Assignment 2
11/3/07 - Construct some Prolog predicates for digraphs. Due Friday, November 16th at Midnight.

Laboratory Project 4
10/26/07 - Complete a type checker for SMLLite language. Due: Wednesday, October 31st, 2007.

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