Semantic Models for Programming Languages (Com S 641)

This page gives access to information about the course offerings of ``Semantics of Programming Languages'' as taught by Gary T. Leavens for the Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University.

This course has had many offerings, which differ in the material covered each year. The following describes the various offerings.

Fall 1990
We used notes from Carl Gunter that later became his book Semantics of Programming Languages and also studied type theory.
Fall 1992
We used Friedman, Wand, and Haynes's (then new) book Essentials of Programming Languages (MIT Press, 1992), and also studied type theory and lambda Prolog.
Fall 1994
We used a monograph by Wim H. Hesselink, Programs, Recursion, and Unbounded Choice (Cambridge, 1992) to study axiomatic (or predicate transformer) semantics.
Fall 1996
We used David Schmidt's book The Structure of Typed Programming Languages (MIT Press, 1994); and studied the design of languages and type systems for them, using denotational semantics to help validate the soundness of the type systems.
Fall 2000
We used Abadi and Cardelli's A Theory of Objects (Springer-Verlag, 1996) to study operational semantics and type theory for object-oriented programming.
Spring 2002
We used Back and von Wright's Refinement Calculus: A Systematic Introduction (Springer-Verlag, 1998) to study axiomatic (i.e., predicate transformer) semantics and laws of programming.
Spring 2004
The course was taught by Markus Lumpe, who used several books on pi-calculus, including Robin Milner's Communicating and Mobile Systems: The pi-Calculus and Davide Sangiorgi and David Walker's The pi-calculus: a Theory of Mobile Processes.
Spring 2006
We will use Flemming Nielson, Hanne Riis Nielson, and Chris Hankin's book Principles of Program Analysis (Springer-Verlag, 1999) to study program analysis, including data flow analysis, constraint-based analysis, abstract interpretation, and type and effect systems. This book emphasizes the commonality between the different kinds of analysis.

Last update $Date: 2007/08/10 23:10:51 $
Gary T. Leavens
229 Atanasoff Hall
Department of Computer Science, Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011-1040 USA