CSE 6341: Foundations of Programming Languages

The best ways to ask questions outside of class are on Piazza and at office hours. Unless your Piazza post needs to be private, please make the post *public*, since other students may be interested in the question and answer.

If you need to contact the instructor and/or grader privately, make a private Piazza post (please don't use e-mail or Canvas; it helps us stay organized to have everything in one place). If you'd like to set up an appointment outside of office hours, create a private post to the instructor or grader including your available times for at least three forthcoming weekdays.

The official source for class times and office hours is Google Calendar. You can use the following links to view the calendar and/or import it into your calendar program.

HTML: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/embed?src=hsglfdcn7v7sa8oedd1qlj1ovc%40group.calendar.google.com&ctz=America%2FNew_York

ICAL: https://calendar.google.com/calendar/ical/hsglfdcn7v7sa8oedd1qlj1ovc%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics

The official source for assignment due dates will be Canvas, but the instructor will try to keep them consistent on Google Calendar.

We'll cover the following PL topics in the context of developing an interpreter for the Quandary language:
- Attribute grammars
- Type checking
- PL design and implementation concepts (e.g., how interpreters work)
- Functional language concepts
- Memory management
- Concurrency

Recommended textbook:

- Programming Language Pragmatics, 3rd or 4th edition, by Scott (might be at the library or available online?)

Textbooks that may help you:

- Formal Syntax and Semantics of Programming Languages (https://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/science_and_technology/artificial_intelligence/Formal%20Syntax%20and%20Semantics%20of%20Programming%20Languages%20-%20Kenneth%20Slonneger.pdf), Chapters 1 and 3
- Java Concurrency in Practice by Goetz (http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/0321349601?uicode=ohlink)

Reading the textbook chapters is important; class time is intended to supplement the readings. Similarly, attending class is important because the slides (when there are slides) by themselves won't be enough to understand the material.

Why should students study PL? The following article refers to undergraduates, but the reasons apply to graduate students at least as much:
http://web.cse.ohio-state.edu/~rountev.1/6341/pdf/why.pdf

The Quandary reference interpreter, Quandary interpreter skeleton, Quandary examples, and other in-class code examples are here:

https://github.com/mdbond/6341-Public

In case you haven't used git or GitHub before, here's a very brief tutorial:

(1) You can browse the code by visiting the link above.

(2) To get your own copy of the code:

git clone https://github.com/mdbond/6341-Public.git

(3) To update your copy of 6341-Public with the latest instructor commits:

git pull

You can find descriptions of assignments, submit your solutions, and see your grades on Canvas: https://osu.instructure.com/courses/103887

Please read "A few things to be aware of in advance" in the syllabus (link near top of Piazza page).

In particular, you must do the projects individually. You may discuss with other people at a high level, but not at the level of developing algorithms or pseudocode together, and you shouldn't develop or share any written or electronic content; any of these activities can lead to similar code. Most importantly, you must never show, share, or send your code to anyone else (nor receive anyone else's) for any reason.