The Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science

CATALOG DESCRIPTION:  This course introduces students to the key features of programming languages. Students implement a series of interpreters that nail down the precise details of how various aspects of programming languages behave.  Students are assumed to understand trees and (mathematical) functions that process them; the course builds up to the features of real programming languages from there.

REQUIRED TEXT: Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation by Shriram Krishnamurthi

COURSE COORDINATOR: Robby Findler

PREREQUISITES: EECS 311, EECS 111

COURSE TOPICS: The course explores these aspects of a programming language (in this order):

• - Modeling programming languages
• - Arithmetic expressions & variables
• - Functions
• - Deferring substitution
• - First class functions
• - (implementing) Recursion
• - State
• - Garbage collection
• - Types

GRADES: Grades are based on weekly homework assignments.

EXAM: There is no exam in this course.

COURSE OBJECTIVES: Students that complete this course should:

• understand the basic semantic features of all call-by-value programming languages (which includes nearly all programming languages they will encounter),
• understand the pragmatics behind those features (when to use them and why),
• understand some of the more advanced features, when they are applicable, and when they are desireable,
• be able to maintain and extend an interpreter-based implementation of a programming language containing those features

ABET CONTENT CATEGORY: