reesjones / plm18

programming languages and modeling, NCSU 2018

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The premise of this subject is that computer programming languages should adapt to the ways of people, and not the other way around. Why? well...

• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: The structure of a language affects its speakers' world view or cognition.
• Given the right language, problem solving becomes easier Hofstadter, 1980, p286
  • Experts don't think deeper than novices; rather, they just don't waste as much time on bad ideas.
  • The right language is like a feature extractors act like a "filter": e.g. in chess, an expert literally does not see bad moves;
  • Massive implicit pruning of the search space Larkin, et.al. 1980

So this subject explores how to write a "good" programming language.

Lectures	Project	Review	Misc
Introduction: Hello!, Style, Python (intro): Lopes' prologue, 3, 4, 5,6, 8, 9, 10, 16, 19, classes, iterators, Parsing (basics): Translation, Regx, Precedence, Grammers, macros Metaphors: States, Tubs Lopes' styles: spreadsheet, map-reduce, RESTful,... Paradigms: make, lambdaCalculus, Lisp, smalltalk, Prolog, Unix, Virtual Fowler's DSL idioms: BNF, closure, decision table, dependency network, state machine, production rules....			Python: Yoda Magic Intro Fun: Erlang Lisp (ish): Roots.lisp Ultimate Misc: Liskov Smalltalk Languages2 Languages1