Programming Languages: the Term Report (2025)

1 Evaluation Criteria

• The conditions for the credit are the following condition #0-#3
  • condition #0: participate in the class and submit reflective essays sufficient number of times
  • condition #1: engage in group work sufficiently
  • condition #2: submit assignments in UTOL
    • Assignment 2 (pl03_oop_basics),
    • Assignment 3 (pl05_generic_fun_type), and
    • Assignment 4 (yet to come, about memory management)
  • condition #3: submit the term report (option A-C)

2 The Term Report

• One of the following options A, B, or C

2.1 Option A (build a compiler)

• Finish code generator in the MinC (minimum subset of C) compiler construction exercise (detailed spec and base code will be announced soon). The following baseline code and test code will be given
  • lexical analyzer and parser (code that reads the source program)
  • definition of syntax tree (data structure you get after reading the source program)
• What you need to submit is “heavily commented code.” Write comments with the mindset of writing down the workings of the code generator. You should write those comments as if you are writing a “document” for others to read, except that they are embedded within the code
• The submission is evaluated with criterion including
  • the level of accomplishment (how many tests you passed),
  • the quality of the code and documentation of the code generator,
  • and additional advanced topics you achieved (optimization, exension (for statement, floating point numbers, pointers, etc.)

2.2 Option B (apply to your project)

• Apply what you’ve learned in this lecture or what you recently learned about programming languages to your bachelor thesis research or other ongoing projects (or conduct a development or an experiment hopefully useful for it). Here are some examples, among others.

• Use OCaml, Julia, Go, or Rust to develop programs you need to develop in your bachelor thesis or other research projects, to the end of enhancing their quality. Attempts to enhance their functionality and/or robustness thanks to the programability of such languages. Investigate their advantages or shortages you learned through the experiences.

• Consider which topics are most useful to your future task and conduct an experiment or development at least one step deeper than the exercises of the lecture.

• Expected contents:

  • research being conducted or planned
  • the goal you set this time, toward the end of using it in your research
  • programs you developed and/or experiments you conducted
  • results
  • discussion and your thoughts

• I mentioned connection to your bachelor thesis research or other projects several times above; I did so in the hope that you can use your time most effectively and profitably; I do not have any intention to narrow the range of topics you can choose from. If you have a topic of your interest but have no relevant projects you may apply it to or think your projects are too far from it, never mind and choose the topic you are interested in.

2.3 Option C (read a paper)

• Based on what you have learned in this lecture, read a related paper in English and summarize it with your own thought.
• Expected contents:
  • The purpose of your reading the paper: What did you try to learn from the paper? (not just to “write the report”)
  • Summary of the paper (bear in mind that it is not just a translation. Imagine you are writing an article in another magazine introducing the paper)
  • The value of the paper, in your own thoughts and terms
  • Other thoughts, including constructive criticism or what you think should follow this paper, etc.
• I don’t put an upper bound on the length; the minimum is three pages.
• I especially look forward to researches on program code generation using large language models
• A few recommended venues to search for papers (but not limited to them)
  • PLDI
  • ISMM
  • CGO

3 Due

• report is due: August 9th, 2025
• before you submit the final report, submit an abstract (declaration of what you will work on) which is due: July 12th

4 How to submit

• will be announced soon in UTOL and this page
• watch UTOL (submissions will be open soon) and this page