COS 301: Programming Languages Fall 2012

Instructor: Curtis Meadow

University of Maine School of Computing and Information Science

Syllabus: Course description, grading policy, broad outline, general class policies; ABET syallabus - includes specific goals and contributions to outcomes
Project: Language Selection Document. Please download this form, and fill it out using a word processor.This will be graded as HW1.
Download: Word Open Office; Policies and Format; Scoring Rubric for Writing
Specific Project Assignments: Presentation Option An in-class presentation in lieu of one paper.; Paper Format Checklist Use this before submitting your paper.; Project Paper #1: Overview and History; Project Paper #2: Syntax, Operators, Scope and Primitive Data Types; Project Paper #3: Data Types, Expression Evaluation and Assignment Statements; Project Paper #4: Control Flow and Functions
Sample data; Project Paper #5: Evaluation and Conclusions
Homework Assignments: Assignment 1. See Language selection form above. Due Sept 6.; Assignment 2. Due Thursday Oct 4.; Take-home essay question. Due Tues Oct 23.; Assignment 3. Due Thurs Oct 25.; Assignment 4. Due Thurs Nov 8.; Assignment 5. Due Thurs Dec 6.
Obfuscated Code Contest
Lecture Notes: These notes are from Fall 2011 and may be revised over the course of the semester. Do not print until just before class coverage.; Preliminaries; Technical Writing; History and Evolution of Programming Languages; Syntax and Semantics; Lexical and Syntactic AnalysisRev. Oct 2012; Names and Binding; Data Types; More Data Types and Garbage Collection; Expressions and Assignment; Statement Level Control Structures; Subprograms; Exceptions; Stack Frames; Smalltalk (Part of Ch 12)

Technical Writing Resources
   Mayfield Handbook-TOC
   UMaine Writing Center
    IEEE Citation Examples - Monash University Library
    Accessible Computer Science Research Guide - Dalhousie University Libraries

Other Points of Interest
If happen across any items that you think might be particularly interesting and/or entertaining for the class, please email me
   99 Bottles of Beer -- in 1,500 Programming Languages
   Hello, World in 200 Programming Languages
   The Classic Hello World Career Ladder
   TIOBE Programming Community Index
   Ranking the popularity of programming languages
   Periodic Table of Perl Operators
   PHP contrasted to Perl (PHP - it's "training wheels without the bike" - Randal L. Schwartz)
      Showing that language rants are still very much alive
   JavaScript: The World's Most Misunderstood Programming Language
   The World's Most Misunderstood Programming Language Has Become the World's Most Popular Programming Language
      If you do anything on the Web, then sooner or later you will use Javascript. Read these first.

Contributions from readers
   Courtesy of Jenna from a yet-unknown Girl Scout Troop
     Computer History: A Timeline of Computer Programming Languages
A brief summary of the history of programming languages. It is a great introduction to the more detailed links at the bottom of the page.
One of them, Programming Languages Through the Years has a very interesting chart that shows the slowing pace of language development.
For the most widely-used languages, the last major developments were in 2001 (C# and VB.NET)

   The two below are courtesy of Christina from the CCS Valley Computer Club
   A Beginner’s Guide to Programming Languages
      A brief overview of the most common languages in current use; great place to start for a newbie, especially if you feel like you've been thrown into the deep end of a bowl of alphabet soup!
   Website Design for Online Business
While this site has less programming language content per se than other references here, it is a great introduction to HTML, and more importantly the
context and environment in which HTML is used. It takes much more than just HTML to create a website — HTML is the glue that holds the pieces together.
if this site piques your interest the next steps are CSS and then Javascript.