CSE3302/CSE5307 Programming Languages (Programming Language Concepts)

Course Summary

Welcome to the world of programming languages!
A small number of concepts underline the hundreds of programming languages that have been designed and implemented. This course introduces the concepts that serve as a basis for programming languages. It aims to provide the students with a basic understanding and appreciation of the various essential programming language constructs, programming paradigms, evaluation criteria and language implementation issues. The course covers concepts from functional, imperative, object-oriented, logic programming and optionally scripting languages. These concepts are demonstrated by incrementally adding more features to a simple functional language called Lambda Calculus to eventually arrive at a full-fledged, user-friendly general purpose programming language. At the end of the course, a number of modern programming languages from various paradigms are presented as case studies.

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Administrative Information

Lectures: Mon/Wed 4:00-5:30 PM, NH 109.

Instructor: Kenny Zhu - ERB-535 Phone: 817-272-3721 Email: kenny[dot]zhu@uta[dot]edu
Office hours: Wed 1-2 PM

Teaching Assistant: Weiran (Peter) Zhang
Email: wxz9630[at]mavs.uta.edu
Office hours: Fri 2-4 PM @ ERB-316

Reference Textbooks:

  1. Types and Programming Languages by Benjamin C. Pierce, The MIT Press.
  2. Practical Foundations for Programming Languages by Robert Harper, Cambridge University Press.
  3. Programming Languages Principles and Paradigms by Allen Tucker and Robert Noonan, McGraw Hill / 2009-5-1.
  4. Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation by Shriram Krishnamurthi, Brown, Online.

Assessment:

  1. In-class quizzes: 15%
  2. Tutorial participation: 5% (bonus)
  3. Assignments: 20%
  4. Project: 20% (Project description (PDF) (TeX), Code Base, Examples) Deadline: Monday, Apr 27, 2026, 12 Midnight..
  5. Final Exam: 45%

Schedule

WeekDateTopic SlidesResourcesHomework
101/12/2026 Introduction[lecture] [tutorial] Tucker Ch.1 hw1 (pdf) hw1 (tex)
201/21/2026 Inductive Definition and Proofs (I) [lecture] [tutorial] Harper Ch. 1-4
301/28/2026 Inductive Definition and Proofs (II) [lecture] [tutorial] Harper Ch. 1-4 hw2 (pdf) hw2 (tex)
42/04/2026 Untyped Lambda Calculus [lecture] [tutorial] Pierce Ch 5, 8, 9 hw3 (pdf) hw3 (tex)
502/11/2026 Untyped Lambda Calculus (II), Simply-typed Lambda Calculus [lecture] [tutorial] Pierce Ch 8, 9 hw4 (pdf) hw4 (tex)
602/18/2026 Extension to Simply-typed Lambda Calculus (I) [lecture] [tutorial] Pierce Ch. 11 hw5 (pdf) hw5 (tex)
702/25/2026 Extension to Simply-typed Lambda Calculus (II) [lecture] [tutorial] Pierce Ch. 11 hw6 (pdf) hw6 (tex)
803/04/2026 Going Imperative [lecture] [tutorial] Pierce Ch. 12 hw7 (pdf) hw7 (tex)
903/18/2026 Memory Management [lecture] [tutorial] Tucker Ch. 11 hw8 (pdf) hw8 (tex)
1003/25/2026 Type Inference (I)[lecture] [tutorial] Pierce Ch. 22, 23 hw9 (pdf) hw9 (tex)
1104/01/2026 Type Inference (II) [lecture] [tutorial] Pierce Ch. 22, 23 hw10 (pdf) hw10 (tex)
1204/06/2026 Subtyping [lecture] [tutorial] Pierce Ch. 15 hw11 (pdf) hw11 (tex)
1304/15/2026 Object-Oriented Programming [lecture] [tutorial] Tucker Ch. 14 hw12 (pdf) hw12 (tex)
1404/20/2026 Logic Programming [lecture] [tutorial] Tucker Ch. 15 hw13 (pdf) hw13 (tex)
1504/27/2026 Final Review Class [tutorial] N/A
Copyright (c) Kenny Q. Zhu, 2012-2026.