COMP2212 Programming Language Concepts

Module Overview

The aim of this module is to introduce students to the fundamental concepts underlying all programming languages, to introduce a broad range of programming language styles and features, and to provide the theoretical foundation that they will need in order to be able to make informed judgements about programming languages.

Aims & Objectives

Aims

Understand the main conceptual features of modern programming languages
Understand common features of type systems and type discipline in various programming languages
Distinguish between families of languages (imperative, OO, functional, declarative) and within families (dynamically typed vs statically typed, call by name vs call by value, etc)
Use diverse programming language primitives for concurrency
Understand diverse approaches to formal semantics of programming languages

Syllabus

Compiled vs. interpreted languages
Imperative, functional and declarative languages
Scope and binding
Type systems
Type inference
Reasoning about programs
Contextual equivalence
Programming language semantics: operational, denotational and axiomatic semantics
Threading and thread safety
Reasoning about concurrent programs
Concurrency primitives in modern programming languages

Learning & Teaching

Learning & teaching methods

Activity	Description	Hours
Lecture		36
Tutorial		12

Assessment

Assessment methods

Method	Hours	Percentage contribution
Coursework	-	25%
Exam	2 hours	75%

Referral Method: By examination

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