Stephen A. Edwards Columbia University Crown
  COMS W4115
Programming Languages and Translators
Spring 2004: CVN
Home Project
 Staff
name email office hours location
Prof. Stephen Edwards sedwards@cs.columbia.edu T, Th 4:00-5:00 462 CSB
  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.
  COMS W3824 Computer Organization: We will be generating assembly code, so you need to understand how to write it.
 Schedule
Date  Lecture  Notes  Reading  Due 
January 20   Intro. to Languages   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch. 1, 2      
January 22   Language Design   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
January 26   Language Processors   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
January 29   Syntax and Parsing   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch 3, 4      
February 3   "          
February 5   Guest lecture on awk          
February 10   ASTs   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch. 4      
February 12   ANTLR   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
February 17   Names, Scope, and Bindings   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)     White Paper    
February 19   "       HW1 PDF File (for Acrobat)    
February 24   Types   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch. 6      
February 26   "          
March 2   Midterm          
March 4   Guest Lecture          
March 9   Control-flow   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
March 11   "          
March 15-19   Spring Break  
March 23   Code Generation   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch. 8, 9      
March 30   A Small Compiler   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)   Ch. 11, 12   LRM    
April 1   Getting it right   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
April 6   Logic Programming   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
April 8   Concurrency   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
April 13   "          
April 15   Functional Programming   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
April 20   "          
April 22   Scripting Langauges   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)        
April 27   Review for Final   PDF File (for Acrobat) PDF File (for Acrobat)     HW2 PDF File (for Acrobat)    
April 29   Review of HW2          
May 4   Final Exam          
May 13         Final Report    
 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
25 % Midterm 1
25 % Midterm 2
10 % Homework
  Collaboration You may not collaborate with other students on either the homework or the project. Any two people found submitting similar code or homework 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 © 2004 Stephen A. Edwards Updated Wed Apr 14 10:01:33 EDT 2004 All Rights reserved