Teaching Assistant: Wilson Haoying Xu
Email: hxu@cse.psu.edu
Office: 110 Pond
Office Hours: Tuesday, Thursday 12:50-2:10pm

Course Description: The goal of this course is to provide a foundation for understanding, designing, and implementing programming languages. In this course we will study essential concepts and structures found in modern programming languages. We will not focus on any one particular language, but rather we will examine features found in many different languages. We will also compare different programming paradigms, including imperative, functional, concurrent, and object-oriented. We will study the specification of programming language syntax and semantics, and the verification of program properties.

Assignments: There will be approximately 9 assignments. Some assignments will be written and some will be moderate programming exercises. These are very important. They are how you really learn the material. In general, it is not possible to succeed in the course without doing the assignments: some exam questions will be based on your understanding of the assignments.

Assignments are due at the start of class on the date specified. They will be accepted after that time until the start of the next class period with a 20% penalty. No submission will be accepted after this time.

Academic Integrity: Every student is expected to submit only their own original work, or where applicable, to cite the origin of the code. This includes written and programming assignments. Any work submitted by a student which they did not originally develop must explicitly indicate the source of the work. Such sources include the textbook, other reference books, and other individuals. The exception is material presented or distributed in class which can be used freely. Failure to follow these guidelines will result in swift and severe actions.

Exams: There will be two evening midterm examinations, the first on February 23, the second on April 6. Both will take place at 8:15-10:15pm in 110 Wartik. Furthermore, there will be a comprehensive final examination, which will be scheduled during the week of finals.

Grading: Final grades will be determined via a combination of the assignments (40%), the midterm examinations (15% each) and the final examination (30%).