CS 403: Programming Languages

Lecture 1

Fall 2003

Department of Computer Science

University of Alabama

Joel Jones

©2003 Joel Jones

Outline

Syllabus Prerequisites Policies Personal Information Why study programming languages? Announcements Reading & Questions for Next Class

©2003 Joel Jones

Name:

Programming Languages/Environments:

Group Work Experience:

What you expect of the class:

Personal Information

Email:

©2003 Joel Jones

Name: Joel Jones

Programming Languages/Environments:C, C++, Java,

Smalltalk on Macintosh, Unix, VMSGroup Work Experience:Industry experience for DP, scheduling, OS, and compilers

What you expect of the class:Preparation, Participation, Perception

Previous Compiler Experience:GCC, Dylan->68K, IR->IA-64 like, ALV->Scheme & ML, kaffe, JVM->annotated JVM

My Personal Information

Email:jones@cs.ua.edu

©2003 Joel Jones

Teaming and Active Learning

Group Work Active Participation in Classroom

Questioning Preparation Working in Pairs Reporting

©2003 Joel Jones

Now Try it!

Pair Up:

• Talk to the person next to you and get their name and why they are taking this class?

• Be ready to report it.

©2003 Joel Jones

Why study programming languages?

• Pair Up:

• With a partner, come up reasons to study programming languages.

©2003 Joel Jones

Example of language-based solution: LilyPond

http://lilypond.org/web/index.html Music layout system

Little (?) language for specifying music (see handouts)

Written in C++, Scheme, LaTeX

©2003 Joel Jones

Announcements ACM initial meeting of the year. Thursday,

August 28th, 5:00pm, EE 119. Industrial Colloquium Series. Tuesday,

September 2nd, 5:00pm in EE119. Herschel Chandler will talk about "Being an Independent Computer Consultant." The talk will cover: What is it like to be an independent computer consultant? How to you prepare for such a career and how do you get started? How do you get clients, and what is it like working with them?

©2003 Joel Jones

Reading & Questions for Next Class Do a web search on programming languages Answer the following questions:

Within an order of magnitude (1,10, 100, 1000, 10000, …), how many programming languages are there?

Within an order of magnitude, how many programming languages are used by more than a million people?