Survey of programming languages and their accompanying paradigms. Basic principles of syntax, semantics, implementation, and pragmatics are addressed. The survey will include representatives from the families of imperative languages, functional languages, logic languages, and hybrid languages. Formal methods of definition and specification are introduced.
Prerequisite:
CSE 274
Required topics (approximate weeks allocated):
Introduction and overview (1)
History, taxonomy and terminology (1)
Describing syntax (1)
Describing semantics (1)
Data abstraction (2)
Expressions (1)
Types (1)
Modules (1)
Scripting Languages (1)
Perl
Imperative languages (1)
FORTRAN
Functional languages (2)
Scheme
Logic languages (2)
Prolog
Graduate students:
Students enrolled in CSE 565 will be given additional readings and/or assignments.
Learning Outcomes:
Identify, describe, and compare programming language paradigms and their evolution
Identify at least one distinguishing characteristic for each of the programming paradigms: procedural, object-oriented, functional, declarative/logic , and scripting languages
Evaluate the tradeoffs between the different paradigms, considering such issues as space efficiency, time efficiency (of both the computer and the programmer), safety, and power of expression
Apply different programming paradigms
Program software using a language in each of the programming paradigms: procedural, object-oriented, functional, declarative/logic, scripting languages
Identify basic concepts in the language translation process
Compare and contrast compiled and interpreted execution models, outlining the relative merits of each
Describe the phases of program translation from source code to executable code and the files produced by these phases
Describe and compare approaches to the facilities present in modern programming languages
Identify and describe the properties of a variable such as its associated address, value, scope, persistence, and size
Evaluate tradeoffs in lifetime management (e.g., reference counting vs. garbage collection)
Describe and use a wide variety of control structures to solve programming problems
Describe the OOP facilities provided in several different languages
Describe, use, and implement procedure calls
Demonstrate the difference between call-by-value, call-by-value/result, call-by-reference and call by name parameter passing
Describe how the runtime system uses activation records to manage program modules and their data
Describe the run-time structures used to support polymorphic function calls
Specify programming language syntax and semantics
Specify selected features of programming language syntax using standard grammatical notations
Specify selected features of programming language semantics using operational semantics, denotational semantics, and axiomatic semantics
Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering
