NDAA09013U Advanced Programming (AP)

Volume 2024/2025
Education

MSc Programme in Computer Science

Content

The purpose of this course is to provide practical experience with sophisticated programming techniques and paradigms from a language-based perspective. The focus is on high-level programming and systematic construction of well-behaved programs.

The course will focus on applicative (functional) programming in Haskell and concurrent programming in Erlang, including some key associated libraries and frameworks.

Learning Outcome

At course completion, the successful student will have:

Knowledge of

  • Higher-level program structuring patterns for separating concerns.
  • The basics of message-passing concurrency, and of how concurrent programming can be used for parallel programming.
  • Program structuring principles and design patterns for dealing with software errors.
  • Property-based testing of functions and stateful APIs


Skills to

  • Use program structuring principles and design patterns, such as monads, to structure the code so that there is a clear separation of concerns.
  • Use a parser combinator library to write a parser for a medium-sized language with a given grammar, including changing the grammar so that it is on an appropriate form.
  • Implement simple concurrent/distributed servers using message passing, with appropriate use of synchronous and asynchronous message passing.
  • Use program structuring principles and design patterns for making reliable distributed systems in the presence of software errors.
  • Construct systematic test suites for programs and modules, including property-based tests where relevant.

 

Competences to

  • Quickly acquaint themselves with advanced programming techniques, from academic literature and/or technical documentation.
  • Use those techniques to solve challenging, realistic problems.
  • Write correct, efficient, and maintainable programs with clear separation of concerns.
  • Give an assessment of their own code, based on a systematic evaluation of correctness, selection of algorithms and data structures, error scenarios, and elegance.

 

Literature

See Absalon when the course is set up.

Programming ability in at least two substantially different languages, and familiarity with basic software-development principles (modularity, abstraction, systematic testing, ...) will be expected.

It is strongly recommended to have some experience with functional programming, corresponding to Chapters 2, 4, 5, and 6 of "Learn You a Haskell for Great Good", for example.

General academic qualifications equivalent to a BSc degree in Computer Science, Software Development, or a closely related subject, are recommended.
Lectures, mandatory assignments, exercise labs.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Lectures
  • 29
  • Preparation
  • 131
  • Practical exercises
  • 21
  • Exam
  • 25
  • Total
  • 206
Written
Individual
Continuous feedback during the course of the semester
Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment, 7 days
Type of assessment details
The exam is individual
Exam registration requirements

To qualify for the exam, the student must obtain at least 50% of the possible total points in the 6 mandatory assignments, distributed as at least 16.7% in each of the two main parts of the course.

The assignments may be submitted in groups of up to two students.

Aid
All aids allowed
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
External censorship
Re-exam

The re-exam is an individual written assignment, different from the ordinary exam.The duration of the re-exam is 5 days.

If student did not already qualify for the ordinary exam, qualification for the re-exam can be achieved by (re)submission and approval of the mandatory assignments.

The assignments must be submitted no later than three weeks before the re-exam date.

Criteria for exam assesment

See learning outcome.