Programming Language Exploration
Learn some new tongues over IAP 1996!
Description
Self-motivated whirlwind tour of contemporary research languages.
Participants will study, experiment with, and present ultra-modern
object-oriented, functional, and logic languages available freely on
the net, from Self to Haskell to lambda-Prolog. Includes issues in
real-world design like virtual machines and garbage collection.
Organization
At each meeting, we will introduce a new language. An implementation
of the language will be available on Athena. You will learn the
language, experiment with it, and write some small programs. We will
issue a set of questions to guide your exploration. At the
following meeting, a group of people will present their findings for
the class and a general discussion will follow.
Prerequisites
We assume that you have a general computer science background, such as
given by the course 6.001 (Structure and Interpretation of Computer
Programs). Extensive language experience (Scheme, CLU, C++) is
recommended. Useful background courses include 6.035 (compilers),
6.170 (software engineering lab), and 6.821 (programming languages).
Also, you will need an Athena account for this course, so sign up for
one now!
| |
|---|---|
| Jan 12-Feb 2 TF11 Room 1-390 | |
Object-oriented | |
| 1/12 | Python |
| 1/16 | Self |
| 1/19 | Sather |
Functional | |
| 1/23 | Haskell |
| 1/26 | Haskell |
Logic | |
| 1/30 | Lambda-Prolog |
| 2/2 | Life |
Schedule
Language Links
Your guides
Your guides on this journey are Thomas Minka and Martin Szummer. We
are both graduate students in Area II of the MIT Computer Science
department.
Computer programmers create new languages all the time (often without even realizing it)
John W.F. McClain -- pdp8@ai.mit.edu