After this course participants are able to:
- Define the semantics of imperative language constructs using inductive methods.
- Explain the consequences of design choices.
- Analyze computations in imperative languages like termination behavior and semantic equivalence.
- Prove properties of programs using inference systems for correctness.
- Determine whether inference systems are sound and/or complete.
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In this course, you will learn formalisms to define the operational semantics of imperative programming languages. These methods are important for designing new languages and extending existing languages. In addition, these formalisms are used for analyzing the behavior of programs. In the field of computing science, you will not only have to apply these formalisms, but you will also have to evaluate, expand or design these formalisms as well.
Instructional Modes
Typically, in each week the course has three sessions:
- Plenary lectures. You are supposed to prepare for these lectures by reading about relatively simple topics. The first 20-25 minutes of the lectures are used for answering your questions about these topics. The rest of the time is used for introducing the more complex topics. After the lecture the weekly learning task will be published.
- Parallel tutorial sessions. Within these sessions you can work on the new learning task or ask questions about the previous task under supervision of TAs.
- Response lectures. Note that at the moment of writing this text, it is not completely clear whether these response lectures actually will take place. If they will indeed be organized, then they are used to discuss solutions of selected exercises of the learning task. Note that you are only allowed to participate in these sessions if you handed in a serious attempt of a solution to the learning task. In case these response lectures are not organized, you can go to the parallel tutorial sessions to see some solutions.
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You have programming experience with imperative programming languages. In addition, you are able to:
- use the language of predicate logic to formulate statements;
- distinguish the elementary steps within argumentation and present proofs in a suitable inference system;
- specify (programming) languages and extensions using regular expressions and context-free grammars;
- formulate clearly, both in motivating solutions as well as in proofs in natural language.
You can obtain these prerequisites by doing the courses in the programming line, and by doing one of the courses Languages and Automata or Introduction to Formal Reasoning, and by doing the course Logic and Applications. In addition, it helps if you have done the course Computability, but that is not a formal requirement.
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The course is finalized with a digital Cirrus exam.
By doing the weekly homework assignments properly, a small bonus can be earned. Note that the bonus is only valid if the grade for the final exam is at least 5.0.
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