Re: Teaching compilers and programming languages together...

It does seem essential to know how to program in at least ONE language
before learning compilation... However I agree that the subjects of PL
and Compilation should be more closely related.
For some time I am thinking about a "two-way" course consisting of these
two seperate courses. There is simply too much material to condense into
just one course, but having two PARALLEL courses seems the way to go.


Course one will be called "Programming Langauges - Examples of use" and
will be built around explaining different kinds of languages. Examples:
Icon, J, Prolog, Scheme etc. These languages should be languages that have
interesting compliation or interpratation techniques. The course will
show examples of programs in these languages. The examples should point
out the interesting aspects regarding the semantics of the languages.


Course two will be called " Programming Languages - Compilation and
Interpration". In this course the languages will be explored more deeply.
Perhaps concentrating on only a few. Here we will examine aspects like:
parameter passing, closures, unification etc. in the process of trying to
understand how the languages are compiled. We will *not* talk only about
LALR etc. we will examine the semantics of programming languages.


Students can take each course seperately but it is recommended to take
them together.
--
Ehud Lamm mslamm@pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il
--

Return to the comp.compilers page.
Search the comp.compilers archives again.