Computer Science 332, Organization of Programming Languages

Goals:

• Understand the major factors that differentiate programming languages and the reasons for such differences.
• Understand some of the major issues that programming language designers must deal with.
• Understand the pros and cons of the basic mechanisms for dealing with such issues.
• Understand the basic concepts of formal syntactic specification of  languages.
  • The Chomsky hierarchy of languages
  • The Backus-Naur meta-language and its variants
• Understand the basic processes  involved in compilation and the difference between compilation and interpretation.

Required text and the scope of the class:

Pratt and Zelkowitz, Programming Languages:  Design and Implementation  --- we'll be covering most of Part I, but selectively:  I'll go into quite a bit more depth in certain areas where I think it warranted, like the Chomsky hierarchy and BNF

Grading:

2 closed book midterms @ 20 percent each

homework ---  20 percent

Closed book, cumulative final exam (but heaviest on the last third of the course) @ 40%

I grade on a liberal curve --- I will always give A's and B's, and ususally (not always!) some C's but if the curve is sufficiently tight, I don't feel obligated to give any D's or F's. If the lower end of the curve is really poor, I will, however.

Prerequisite knowledge:
At least one year's programming experience in a high order language ---  like C, Ada, Fortran, Pascal, or Basic, for most likely examples.  That's normally CS125 and CS225 here at ERAU, but equivalent experience in other languages elsewhere will be perfectly adequate.

Blackboard Enabled: Course material for this course will be published on Blackboard; guest access is enabled there.

This page last changed on 5 Aug 2009