schedule

These lecture notes are provided as a reference (my own personal lecture-prep). They are not intended as a substitute for attending class.

date	lecture notes	reading	hw
week 1
Aug.27	languages steer programmer choices	§§1.0–1.3 (pp.5–16); §§10.0–10.2 (pp.505–509) (skim)
Aug.29	racket intro	§10.3.0 (pp. 509–512)
week 2
Sep.03	The Design Recipe: unit-tests (pizza-area) code: before, after		hw01, on D2L
Sep.05	Union types (and, `cond`) code: before, after
week 3
Sep.10	Union types: further examples incl. numeric intervals; use helpers for union-of-unions		hw02/
Sep.12	language-vocab-and-concepts/	§1.6.1, and skim the rest of Chpt.1 (§1.4–1.7). Do look at how Figures 1.21 (GCD program in C) and 1.22 (its tokenized version) have counterparts in Fig. 1.25 (its parse tree -- a big diagram, but don't be intimidated).
week 4
Sep.17	start structs intro		hw03/
Sep.19	Finish structs intro; Design exercise: a GUI textbox code: before, after (and an alternate version)
week 5
Sep.24	Structs within structs (easter-egg textbox)
Sep.26	union of structs (book-or-dvd) code: before, after; Families of languages		hw04/
week 6
Oct.01	list introduction	§6.6, and §10.1–10.3.1. Suggested/optional: all of §6 and §10.3. Challenge/option: §10.5.
Oct.03			hw05a (2 problems)
week 7
Oct.08	A non-list example of recursive data, stepping through a recursive function		lists.html
Oct.10			exam01
week 8
Oct.15	Tail recursion (code: before, after)	§2.1: Grammars
Oct.17	intro grammars/BNF; practice: grammar for field-declarations
week 9
Oct.22	discuss hw06-soln (incl. hex vs. binary); reflect on immutable data; Scope (for fun: an abusive main.java)		hw06: grammars
Oct.24	passing-functions-before.rkt (and passing-functions-after.rkt as completed in class)
week10
Oct.29	ancestor-tree-before.rkt (video (32m23s)) (and ancestor-tree-after.rkt as completed in class)
Oct.🎃	video: defining ancestor trees in Java (14m41s) (composite pattern), video: writing `size` and template (17m12s); video: writing `changeName` (14m22s) Optional: AncTrees in scala (code, video).
week11
Nov.05	Decide on our language's U0 syntax and internal representation of Exprs/parse-trees; start the law-of-racket.rkt
Nov.07	Look at U0.rkt: data-def'n for an expression, examples of the data, test cases for `parse!` and `expr->string`, and the code for `expr->string`.
week12
Nov.12	explaining the code (incl. recursive-descent parsing, and (optionally) some of the tricks used in the accompanying test-harness). See the videos at the bottom of Interpreting U.
Nov.14	scope-simple-examples.rkt; prolog intro	§3.3, but you can skim §§3.3.4-3.3.5.	AncTrees and Expr Trees
week13
Nov.19	prolog practice; Prolog: recursive relations	Scott Chpt.11, but skip §11.2.6
Nov.21	Review U4-soln; lists in prolog	§3.6 (“the binding of referencing environments”)	U4 shadowing, function-application; prolog
thanksgiving br eak
week14
Dec.03	Finish lists in prolog. Possible: sorts.pl, and/or numbers in prolog
Dec.05	Finish looking at: implementing objects-with-let-over-lambda.rkt (pretty much). Wrap-up		U6: environments
finals week
May.07 (Tue) 14:45	final exam	[0,∞) `:-)`

Opening notes in .rkt files: Many of the lecture-notes links are .rkt files, not html. You should (a) download the file (say, via right-click or save-as; on Windows you might need to re-name the suffix to .rkt manually), (b) start DrRacket, and then (c) choose File » Open… them. Do not copy-paste into an empty DrRacket window — the language-preference won't be set correctly, and the initial lines may be goofed up. One possible result is the error message read-syntax: `#lang` not enabled.

Helpful Links

Other resources on learning racket/scheme. For any of those listed resources, please comment on the discussion boards about how helpful you do (or don't) find them, so that I can recommend them more/less highly to others.
a Racket Style Guide (sections 4 and 5 are pertinent for learners).
Highly recommended (but not required): Adding type-checking: If you want (run-time) type-checking in your Racket programs, see .
For the curious: Understanding quote and backquote.
For the curious: basic pattern-matching in racket
For how racket was used by some developers at Naughty Dogs’ The Last of Us and other applications, here's
- a video: talk by Naughty Dog’s lead programmer — more polished; doesn't focus on racket-by-name, but does show several slides of a domain-specific NPC-scripting-language implemented in racket.
- A reddit-thread with links to the above, as well as more industrial-uses of racket.
- a RacketCon Talk on the use of video: racket in The Last of Us but not as polished a talk as others (e.g. it takes fully 2min for the talk to actually get started);
- (the RacketCon page which includes the above presenter's slides, links to another entertainment-industry talk, and other racket (non-entertainment) talks.)

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