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.12	languages steer programmer choices	§§1.0–1.3 (pp.5–16); §§11.0–11.2 (pp.535–538) (skim)
Aug.14	racket-intro.html	§11.3.0 (pp. 539–542)	hw01a, on D2L
week 2
Aug.17
Aug.19	The Design Recipe: unit-tests (pizza-area) [code: before, after]
Aug.21	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 3
Aug.24
Aug.26	Union types: further examples incl. numeric intervals; use helpers for union-of-unions	video: Union types (18m05s) and video: part II (28m24s) [code: before, after]	hw02/
Aug.28	use helpers for union-of-unions; finish language-vocab-and-concepts/
week 4
Aug.31
Sep.02	Finish structs intro; Design exercise: a GUI textbox [code: before, after] (and an alternate version)	first two videos of structs intro (~35min)	hw03/
Sep.04	Structs within structs (easter-egg textbox)
week 5
Sep.07
Sep.09	union of structs (book-or-dvd) [code: before, after]; Families of languages		hw04/
Sep.11	list introduction	§6.6, and §10.1–10.3.1. Suggested/optional: all of §6 and §10.3. Challenge/option: §10.5.
week 6
Sep.14
Sep.16
Sep.18	terms: scope, binding occurrence (and `let`)		lists.html
week 7
Sep.21
Sep.23	stepping through a recursive function;
Sep.25	A non-list example of recursive data; data-def'n for natnums [code: before, after] (and, a more theoretical take)		hw05a (2 problems)
week 8
Sep.28
Sep.30	start tail recursion [code: before, after]	§2.1: Grammars
Oct.02	passing functions as arguments: [code: before, after]; reflect on immutable data	(video-links embedded in the provided code)
week 9
Oct.05
Oct.07	intro grammars/BNF; practice: grammar for field-declarations
Oct.09	finish grammars, and parse trees; for fun: an abusive main.java		exam01
week10
Oct.12
Oct.14	start Trees: [code: before, after] (video (32m23s))
Oct.16	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).		hw06: grammars
week11
Oct.19
Oct.21	Decide on our language's X0 syntax and internal representation of Exprs/parse-trees; start the law-of-racket.rkt
Oct.23	Look at X0.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
Oct.26
Oct.28	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 X.
Oct.30	scope-simple-examples.rkt; prolog intro	§3.3, but you can skim §§3.3.4-3.3.5.	X2.html
week13
Nov.02
Nov.04	prolog practice; Prolog: recursive relations	Scott Chpt.11, but skip §11.2.6
Nov.06	Review X4-soln; lists in prolog	§3.6 (“the binding of referencing environments”)	../Homeworks/X4.html
week14
Nov.09
Nov.11	Finish lists in prolog. Possible: sorts.pl, and/or numbers in prolog
Nov.13	Finish looking at: implementing objects-with-let-over-lambda.rkt (pretty much). Wrap-up		../Homeworks/X6.html
finals week
Nov.17 (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

some more advanced racket features (some of which you can import into beginning-student):
- contract-examples.rkt-- add (run-time) type-checking to your programs (**Recommended!)
- student-extras.rkt
- let-for-bsl.rkt (not until hw05 though)
- matching-examples.rkt
- quote and backquote
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).
John Carmack (of Doom fame) video: using racket for Oculus (1h05m)
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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