Class Schedule

Course Summary

CS 6390 is a graduate course on the fundamentals of Programming Languages (PL). We will study the foundations of different programming paradigms and techniques in the programming languages literature. Topics include the syntax and semantics of programming languages, applications of logic to programming languages, functional programming, lambda calculus, type systems, program verification, and contemporary programming paradigms (including differentiable and probabilistic programming). By the end of the course, students should be able to pick up a PL research paper (e.g., POPL, OOPSLA, PLDI, ICFP) and understand the various contributions (e.g., type derivations, operational semantics, formalizations, etc.) made. In addition, by the end of the course, students should be able to formulate their own novel PL ideas into a course project. Students are expected to attend lecture, ask questions, complete homeworks, 2 exams and a course project. The full syllabus can be found here

Course logistics including assignment submissions, grades, and online discussion of questions will be done through the course's canvas page.

Week	Date	Topic	Readings / Assignments
Week 1
1	Aug 18	Course introduction and what is a programming language?	Syllabus review
	Aug 20	Syntax: Context Free Grammar, Parsing
Week 2
2	Aug 25	Big step operational semantics
	Aug 27	Small step semantics
Week 3
3	Sep 1	Labor Day - NO CLASS	None
	Sep 3	Interpreters and Denotational Semantics	Assignment 1 Released
Week 4
4	Sep 8	Interpreters and Denotational Semantics
	Sep 10	Abstract Interpretation
Week 5
5	Sep 15	Exam 1 Review	Assignment 1 Due
	Sep 17	Midterm Exam 1
Week 6
6	Sep 22	Propositional Logic	Start thinking about project ideas
	Sep 24	Hoare Logic (Axiomatic Semantics)
Week 7
7	Sep 29	Hoare Logic Part 2
	Oct 1	Prolog and logic programming
Week 8
8	Oct 6	Lambda Calculus part 1
	Oct 8	Lambda Calculus part 2	Project Proposal due
Week 9
9	Oct 13	Functional Programming in LISP	Assignment 2 Released
	Oct 15	Simply Typed Lambda Calculus and Type Systems
Week 10
10	Oct 20	Type Systems and Type checking rules
	Oct 22	Curry-Howard correspondence
Week 11
11	Oct 27	Dynamic Language Features Pt. 1 (OOP, Reflection, Dynamic Typing)
	Oct 29	Dynamic Language Features Pt. 2
Week 12
12	Nov 3	Review for Midterm 2	Assignment 2 Due
	Nov 5	Midterm Exam 2
Week 13
13	Nov 10	Reactive and Dataflow Programming Languages
	Nov 12	Probabilistic Programming Languages
Week 14
14	Nov 17	Probabilistic Programming Languages
	Nov 19	Differentiable Programming Languages
Week 15
15	Nov 24	Differentiable Programming Languages	Project Reports Due
	Nov 26	No Class
Week 16
16	Dec 1	Course Recap