Stephen A. Edwards Columbia University Crown
  COMS W4115
Programming Languages and Translators
Fall 2003
Home Project
 General Information
  Class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays, 5:40PM-6:55PM, in Hamilton 717
  Homepage The class discussion board etc. is on the Columbia Courseworks system
 Staff
name email office hours location
Prof. Stephen Edwards sedwards@cs.columbia.edu T, Th 4:00-5:00 PM 462 CSB
Elena Filatova filatova@cs.columbia.edu W, F 10:00 - 11:00 AM TA Room (after Sept. 15)
Avraham Shinnar as1619@cs.columbia.edu M 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM TA Room
Josh Mackler jrm267@columbia.edu M, W 2:30 PM - 3:30 PM TA Room
  Please begin email subject lines with [COMS 4115]
 Overview
  The goal of PLT is to teach you both about the structure of computer programming languages and the basics of implementing compilers for such languages.

The course will focus mostly on traditional imperative and object-oriented languages, but will also cover functional and logic programming, concurrency issues, and some aspects of scripting languages. Homework and tests will cover language issues. You will design and implement a language of your own design in a semester-long group project.

While few of you will ever implement a full commercial compiler professionally, the concepts, techniques, and tools you will learn have broad application.

 Prerequisites
  COMS W3157 Advanced Programming: You will be dividing into teams to build a compiler, so you need to have some idea how to keep this under control
  COMS W3261 Computability and Models of Computation: You will need an understanding of formal languages and grammar to build the parser and lexical analyzer.
 Schedule
Date  Lecture  Notes  Reading  Due 
September 2   Intro. to Languages   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch. 1, 2      
September 4   Language Design   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
September 9   Language Processors   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
September 11   Scripting Langauges   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
September 16   Syntax and Parsing   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch 3, 4      
September 18   "          
September 23   ANTLR   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)     White Paper    
September 25   ASTs   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch. 4      
September 30   Small Examples   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch. 11, 12      
October 2   Getting it right   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)     HW1 PDF File (for Acrobat)    
October 7   HW 1 review          
October 9   Midterm review          
October 14   Midterm          
October 16   Names, Scope, and Bindings   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
October 21   "          
October 23   Types   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch. 6      
October 28   "       LRM    
October 30   Control-flow   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
November 4   Election Day  
November 6   Code Generation   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch. 8, 9      
November 11   Guest Lecture: Security          
November 13   Guest Lecture: AWK          
November 18   Logic Programming   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
November 20   Functional Programming   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
November 25   "       HW2 PDF File (for Acrobat)    
November 27   Thanksgiving  
December 2   Review for final   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
December 4   Final Exam          
December 9,10   Project Presentations, 717 Hamilton          
December 18   Project reports due          
 Required Text
  Cover of the Dragon Book Alfred V. Aho, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman.
Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools.
Addison-Wesley, 1985.

Long the standard text on compilers, the ``dragon book'' is now a little dated. It remains one of the more readable books on the topic, and is written by our own Prof. Al Aho.
 Optional Texts
  Cover of Programming Language Pragmatics Michael L. Scott.
Programming Language Pragmatics
Morgan Kaufmann, 2000

A broad-minded book about languages in general; less on compiler construction, but speaks much more about wider language issues.
  Cover of Appel Andrew W. Appel.
Modern Compiler Implementation in Java.
Cambridge University Press, 1998.

This focuses much more on compiler construction than Scott.
  Cover of Muchnick Steven S. Muchnick
Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation.
Morgan Kaufmann, 1997.

A very extensive book on many aspects of compiler design. Starts about halfway through Appel and goes much farther. Recommended for serious compiler hackers only.
 Class Policies
  Grading 40 % Project
20 % Midterm
30 % Final
10 % Homework
  Collaboration You will collaborate with your own small group on the programming project, but you may not collaborate with others on homeworks. Groups may share ideas about the programming assignments, but not code. Any two groups found submitting similar code will receive zero credit for the whole assignment, and repeat offenses will be referred to the dean. See Columbia academic policies for more details.
  Late Policy Zero credit for anything handed in after it is due without explicit approval of the instructor.
Copyright © 2003 Stephen A. Edwards Updated Mon Dec 8 20:14:38 EST 2003 All Rights reserved