Advances in Programming Languages (U01952)

? Credit Points : 10 ? SCQF Level : 10 ? Acronym : INF-4-APL

This course will survey recent developments in programming language design and implementation with an emphasis on those developments which are technological advances on the state-of-the-art.

Entry Requirements

? Pre-requisites : Successful completion of Year 3 of an Informatics Single or Combined Honours Degree, or equivalent by permission of the School. Compiling Techniques and Functional Programming & Specification are strongly recommended. Language Semantics & Implementation is recommended.

Subject Areas

Home subject area

Computer Science, (School of Informatics, Schedule O)

Delivery Information

? Normal year taken : 4th year

? Delivery Period : Semester 2 (Blocks 3-4)

? Contact Teaching Time : 2 hour(s) per week for 10 weeks

First Class Information

Date	Start	End	Room	Area	Additional Information
12/01/2009	09:00	09:50	Room G.02, William Robertson Building	Central

All of the following classes

Type	Day	Start	End	Area
Lecture	Monday	09:00	09:50	Central
Lecture	Thursday	09:00	09:50	Central

Summary of Intended Learning Outcomes

Give examples of different programming idioms, other than the imperative class-based object-orientated model which is familiar from Java.

Explain distinctive features of programming idioms, illustrating some relative advantages and disadvantages.

Describe requirements and constraints in the design of programming languages and individual language features.

Outline some of the problems arising from feature interaction in programming languages.

Describe in depth a specific recent programming language innovation, explaining its motivation, implementation and how it compares to previous approaches.

Write working code that demonstrates the use of a novel language feature, based on technical research papers and language documentation.

For a range of programming language features, identify the problem they were created to solve, explain the approach they take to do this, and discuss possible problems that may arise.