CSCE 330 Fall 2012: Syllabus

The textbooks are:

  • Hector J. Levesque. Thinking as Computation. The MIT Press, 2012 (required text, referred to as [L]). Supplementary materials from the author are available.
  • Graham Hutton. Programming in Haskell. Cambridge University Press, 2007 (required text, referred to as [U]). Supplementary materials from the author, including an errata list, are available.
    • We may also use:
  • Chapter 2 of: Ghezzi, Carlo and Mehdi Jazayeri. Programming Language Concepts, 3rd ed.. Wiley, 1998 (referred to as [G] or [G&J]). Supplementary materials from the authors, including an errata list, are available.
  • Section 7.3, Chapter 8, and Chapter 9 of: Ghezzi, Carlo and Mehdi Jazayeri. Programming Language Concepts, 2nd ed.. Wiley, 1987 (referred to [G&J, 1987]).

    • The main (approximately 80% of the time) instructional delivery strategy for this course is lectures. Discussions based on student presentations, videos, quizzes or in-class exercises, and a possible invited talk will make up the remaining 20% of time. The first day of classes is Thursday, August 23, 2012. The last day to withdraw without failure is Thursday, October 11, 2012. The last day of classes is Thursday, December 6, 2012. The final exam is Friday, December 14, 2012, at 1230pm in the classroom (SWGR 2A21). These are the regularly scheduled times for courses taught from 1530-1645 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. According to university policy, the exam will last two-and-a-half hours. (See the university exam schedule.)

    See here for the fall 2012 academic calendar.

    Please see elsewhere in the web pages for the course for additional administrative information.

    WeekLecture Topics
    1: August 23 (Thursday only)Introduction (Notes)
    2: August 28, 30The Prolog Language (Chapters 2-3 [L])
    3: September 4, 6Writing Prolog Programs (Chapter 4 [L])
    4: September 11, 13 Case Study: Satisfying Constraints (Chapter 5 [L])
    5: September 18, 20Case Study: Interpreting Aerial Sketch Maps; Lists in Prolog (Parts of Chapter 6 [L], Chapter 7 [L])
    6: September 25, 27 Case Study: Understanding Natural Language (Chapter 8 [L])
    7: October 2, 4Discussion or Review; Midterm
    8: October 9, 11 Haskell: Introduction, Types, and Classes (Chs.1-3 [H])
    9: October 16 FP (Video; Section 7.3 [G&J, 1987]); Fall Break
    10: October 23, 25 Haskell: Defining Functions, List Comprehensions, and Recursive Functions (Chs.4-6 [H])
    11: October 30, November 1 Haskell: Higher-order Functions, Functional Parsers, and Interactive Programs (Chs.7-9 [H]); MapReduce (Notes)
    12: November 8 Haskell: The Countdown Problem (Ch.11 [H])
    13: November 13, 15 Syntax (Notes; Section 2.1.1 [H&J])
    14: November 20 Names, Scopes, and Bindings; Overview of Operational Semantics (Sections 2.1.2--2.5 [G&J]): Thanksgiving Recess
    15: November 27, 29 Run-time Structure of Programming Languages (Sections 2.5--2.7 [G&J])
    16: December 4, 6 Student Presentations