EECS483: Course Details

Overview

Compilers Construction (EECS 483) will aquaint you with the fundamental ideas surrounding the design and implementation of a compiler. The course will stress a significant, practical course project: an end-to-end optimizing compiler. You will produce a program that accepts as input source code in a high-level language and produces as output low-level assembly representing an executable program. You will master fundamental concepts of lexical analysis, parsing, code generation, optimization, as well as calling conventions, dataflow analysis, grammars, variable bindings, control flow, types, and object memory layout.

Students will gain experience with programming via the Cool programming language. In addition, students will complete assignments using their choice of Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Haskell, or OCaml.

Enrollment Restrictions

Project and Assignments

This course consists of 6 Programming Assignments. Taken together, the assignments form a complete optimizing compiler for Cool, the Classroom Object-Oriented Language. The project components are assigned in roughly increasing order of size and difficulty; proportionately more time is allotted for the later assignments. Later assignments will be weighted more heavily in the final grade.

Your program submissions will be evaluated for correctness, organization, and documentation.

Assignments may be done individually or in teams of two, three, or four members. However, the first assignment must be completed individually to acquaint you with the Cool Language.

Students on teams are expected to participate equally in the effort and to be thoroughly familiar with all aspects of the joint work. All members bear full responsibilitiy for the completion of assignments. Members turn in one solution for each Assignment; each member receives the same grade for the assignment. While you are allowed to change teams between assignments, teams may not be dissolved in the middle of an assignment without instructor permission.

Assignments are due at 11:50pm on the date in the course schedule. Assignments will be turned in electronically via a special submission server.

Course Programming Languages

• Cool is an imperative, strongly-type classroom object-oriented programming language. It can be viewed as a simple language with several Java-like features. You will learn Cool as part of this course and build a compiler for Cool programs.

Additionally, you will construct your compiler using one (or more if you choose) of the following languages.

• Python is a structured, imperative programming language with a high emphasis on readabilty and support for object-oriented and functional programming. You are expected to know imperative and object-oriented programming in Python before entering this course.
• OCaml is an efficient, functional, strongly-type, object-oriented language with imperative support. OCaml is a useful language for constructing program analysis tools and compilers.
• Ruby is an imperative, dynamically typed, object-oriented language with functional support.
• JavaScript is a dynamically-typed language with object-oriented, imperative, and functional support often used to web and asynchronous programming.
• Haskell is an advanced, statically-typed, lazy, purely functional language.

Grading

You must complete the programming assignments to receive a passing grade.

Final grades will be computed based upon the class average. The average grade will roughly correspond to a B.

Late Policy

Homework assignments are due at 11:50pm on the due date. Assignments submitted late will be penalized based on lateness. If an assignment is submitted h hours late, the assignment's final grade will be reduced by h%. For example, if you get 90% on an assignment submitted 8 hours late, your final grade is .92(.90)

Regrade Policy

Homework and exam regrade requests must be received by the GSI within one week of receiving your grade. We will regrade for correcetness, meaning that your grade may increase or decrease, so you could end up with fewer points than before the regrade.

All course materials are due by the end of the final exam date: April 24, 2017 at 6pm. There will be no changes after this time.

Honor Code Statement

Homework assignments

Please abide by the following policies with regard to programming assignments. Students who violate these policies are subject to failure for the assignment or semester as well as referral to the Honor Council.

• The first homework, PA1, must be completed individually.

• Subsequent assignments can involve teams of up to four members. You may share code amongst your team, but you are not allowed to share code with other teams or students.

• Students and teams can discuss strategies for completing the homeworks, such as data structures and software architecture.

• Students are expected to keep their code and submissions private. Please do not create publicly-accessible repositories (e.g., GitHub).

• We will use plagiarism detection software on submitted assignments.

Any attempt to subvert, disable, or disclose information from the automatic grading server will result in an F for the semester and referral to the Honor Council. Examples include:

• Attempting to read or change files in the jailed filesystem other than those described in the assignment specification (e.g., configuration).
• Shelling out to the reference compiler to complete the test cases.
• Attempting to break out of the jailed environment by exploiting vulnerabilities in the grading system software stack.

Midterm and Final Exams

• You are allowed one sheet of paper (both sides) containing any notes you like.
• Exams are not open book