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From: enbody@ss8.cps.msu.edu (Dr Richard Enbody)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: SEEKING SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING A LANGUAGES COURSE
Message-ID: <1990Aug21.134744.15139@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
Date: 21 Aug 90 13:47:44 GMT
References: <6717.26c20a9a@vax1.tcd.ie> <1990Aug14.123438.9207@cs.hope.edu> <6776.26cdc9f8@vax1.tcd.ie>
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Reply-To: enbody@ss8.cps.msu.edu (Dr Richard Enbody)
Organization: Computer Science, Michigan State University, E. Lansing
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I teach a Programming Languages course using Pratt as a text,
but skip most of the sections on specific languages.  The course
is a 10-week "quarter" course meeting 4 times per week.  I handle
the conflict of "languages tutorial vs. concepts" by teaching
concepts in the class and by having the students learn two
languages which are significantly different from the procedural
languages which they are familiar with - Lisp and Prolog.
Lisp is taught by handing out the "Little Lisper".  It isn't modern
Lisp, but covers the part of Lisp that is most different from Pascal.
That book is completely self teaching - no class time is spent on Lisp
(except for what comes naturally under the "concepts" part of the
class).  A similar technique is used for Prolog with the "Prolog Primer"
book, but I find that one class is necessary for Prolog.  Four
programming assignments are given: exercises from the "LittleLisper", a
Lisp Lexical 
Scanner (requires a Lisp "DO" loop), a Prolog "family tree" problem, and
a Prolog Expression Parser.  The assignments together are worth about
10% of the class grade, i.e. very little.  The reason for teaching the
languages is so the students can appreciate that there are other
ways of programming than procedural programming.  After playing with
these languages they can appreciate some of the unique approaches
to programming languages and can begin to appreciate what procedural
and nonprocedural programming is all about.

Time is also spent discussing Lisp machine architecture.  The final
two weeks are a compact compiler course built around a Simple Precedence
parser with a quick overview of a few of the most important
optimization techniques and some simple code generation.

So what do they learn?  They learn why languages look they way
they do and what they are capable of. They know why FORTRAN is still around and
which parts of it will never change.  They can begin to appreciate
nonprocedural programming - most find the "Little Lisper" to be
fun and the _five line_ Prolog Parser really knocks them over.
In addition, they learn the basic parts of a compiler.

This is a tough course, but I find that the students enjoy it.
Most interesting is that I have not had a single complaint
about having them learn Lisp and Prolog on their own.
I have taught it twice, and will teach it again this Fall.

-rich
enbody@cps.msu.edu