Advances in Programming Languages

Slides : Recording

Monday’s lecture gave examples of parameterized types in different programming languages: families of data types with a common structure, built by applying type constructors to one or more type parameters. Examples include in Java or C# generics as well as the algebraic datatypes of Haskell and OCaml. To work with parameterized types we use polymorphic functions — code that can work with more than one type, either in a uniform way (parametric polymorphism) or with type-specific variations (ad-hoc polymorphism).

Links: Slides for Lecture 3; Recording of Lecture 3

Slides : Recording

Today’s lecture introduced the first topic for the course, on types in programming languages: some of the ways they are used, and their relation to the mathematical models of lambda-calculus and type theory.

Slides : Recording

This opening lecture covered some background context for the course, with ideas about what makes existing programming languages distinctive and what inspires new ones. You can read some of this in the slides for the lecture or listen to the recording on Media Hopper Create.