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CS252R: Advanced Topics in Programming Languages ...

This term (Fall 2021): ... Design and Implementation — PL Studio!

Class meeting time: TR 11:15 – 12:30

Class meeting room: SEC 1.412

Course website: https://pl-design-seminar.seas.harvard.edu

Instructor: Nada Amin (namin@seas.harvard.edu)

Teaching Fellow: Anastasiya Kravchuk-Kirilyuk (akravchukkirilyuk@g.harvard.edu)

Course description

The seminar will be a hands-on exploration of programming language systems for various purposes (reflection, verification, relational/logic programming, …). Each student will design and implement their own system (for example, a virtual machine and/or programming language and/or framework) in the language of their choice for the purpose of their choice.

Teaching Philosophy

Learning by doing is fun and rewarding.

Course objectives

By the end of the course, the students will be able to use principled programming methods to design and implement systems. They will level up, and think 'meta' about building systems. When confronted with a problem, they will collect instances, and design a programming interface (language, framework) to create a common generic solution. Students will practice studying programming language and system papers and artifacts critically, as well as developing their own.

Course policies and expectations

Students are expected to attend and participate in the class meetings twice a week. Students will have to complete two pre-defined assignments in the language of their choice. In addition, they are expected to lead a presentation and discussion in meetings on the paper/system/approach of their choice. There will be one meeting per student. If we exhaust the presentation meetings, we will use class time to discuss thematics all together.  Finally, students are expected to work early and often on their final projects. They can find times to discuss their topic with the course staff. Ideally but not necessarily, the topic of a student's presentation will be related to their final project. We might also use class time to discuss projects. Projects can be done in group, with each individual making a substantial contributions. Group projects will be expected to be more substantial than solo projects. We expect students to share their work privately with the class or publically on the web.

Materials and Access

We seeded suggestions for papers and systems. Students are also welcome to suggest other papers/systems/approaches.

We use a shared private Github repository, where students can send pull requests with their work or a pointer to their publically available work.

We use Ed for discussions and Perusall for annotated readings. These sites are available from Canvas.

Assignments and Grading Procedure

Feedback will be given on pre-defined assignments, lead meetings, on participation and on final project progress throughout the semester.

Template for paper discussion and presentation

  • What is the key idea of the paper?
  • What did you learn from the paper and how can you use it in your own projects?
  • Can you run the artifact and experiment with it?
  • For the interface, what are the primitives, the means of combination, and the means of abstraction?

Template for project

  • What is the project exploring?
  • What are the methods used?
  • What problems does the project solve?
  • How does the system 'go meta'?
  • Is the project well-documented and usable by others?
  • For the interface, what are the primitives, the means of combination, and the means of abstraction?

Academic Integrity

Please see the Honor Code.

Accommodations for students with disabilities

Students needing academic adjustments or accommodations because of a documented disability must present their Faculty Letter from the Accessible Education Office (AEO) and speak with the professor by the end of the second week of the term. Failure to do so may result in the Course Head's inability to respond in a timely manner. All discussions will remain confidential, although Faculty are invited to contact AEO to discuss appropriate implementation.