Teaching compilers and programming languages together...

I almost exploded when I found out that in our undergraduate CS program
Programming Langages (PL) course does not seem to be a prerequisite for
Compilers (Comp). I have tried changing it and got an argument along the
lines of 'In my days, **I** have taken Comp before PL and nothing bad
happened to me.'


Having failed to change the prereqs I tried to figure out why I was so
unhappy about this. I discovered that what bothered me was not the absence
of "PL before Comp" prereq, but absence of any ordering between the two
courses. I think the decision of which course is to be taught first is a
chicken-and-egg problem, but it would be nice to know, teaching one of the
courses, if you can assume that the other has already been taken.


{I am talking about fairly basic, conventional PL/Comp courses, nothing
too advanced or bizarre--things that everyone should know about the two
subjects. Oh, and as of right now we have both courses required for B.S.
in CS, which we may or may not change.}


What is the general feeling about it?


In a slightly desperate attempt to fix the problem, I came up with the
following bright idea :-)


teach them together in a 2-semester sequence


First:
basic PL concepts:param passing/scoping/contral structures
basic Comp stuff:scanning/parsing/ideas of code generation/
correspondence between language features and
what compiler has to do/implem. of some features


Second:


more advanced--maybe more parsing, weirder PL stuff, some
hairy language stuff etc ???


Also, where does an overview of various PLs go? Things like
imperative/functional/etc programming, pieces of
LISP/Prolog/SNOBOL/whatever...


The problem that I have is in finding a book that could be used to
support such a course. I find the Scheme-based PL book too advanced
for my purposes...


Any suggestions regarding this idea or generally resolving the
chicken-and-egg problem will be most welcome...


--Boris Aronov
    Computer Science, B'klyn Poly
    aronov@ziggy.poly.edu


PS. Our newsfeed supplies us with a random subset of articles :-(, so I
would much appreciate a CC: of any replies that are posted.
--

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