January 23, 2007

Chapters 2 and 3

• class discussion

Go over exercises

• Page 24. Exercise 1. a,b,d,e,and f
• Page 25. Exercise 2 corresponding to a,b,d,e, and f of Exercise 1
• Page 25. Exercise 3 corresponding to a and f of Exercise 1
• Page 39 and 40. Exercise 1
• Page 40. Exercise 3
• page 40. Exercise 4.

Discuss Chapter 3 - Notes on Chapter 3

Ahead

• For class on Thursday January 25, 2007. Read and be prepared to discuss the material in Chapter 4 of the text. Also prepare answers to exercises 1- 5 on pages 59 - 62.

• For class on Thursday, February 1, 2007. Be sure to familiarize yourself with ML Read and be prepared to discuss the material in chapters 5 and 6. Do all the exercises in Chapter 5 and exercises 1-4 in Chapter 6.

Writing assignment

• Writing assignment for Tuesday February 6, 2007 (by 5 PM).
• Read The article "The Hundred-year Language."
• Here is a bibliographic reference to that article in ACM style.  
  GRAHAM, P. 2003. The Hundred-Year Language http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html
• The article raises some interesting questions. I've grouped a few below. Choose one group and write an essay that considers the questions by surveying some of the literature on the topic, stating what others have said about an answer to that or a closely-related question. Your essay should include a conclusion based on your research. While I am often interested in your opinion, this essay isn't the place for it.
  
  1. Will we even be writing programs in a hundred years? Won't we just tell computers what we want them to do?
  2. How will we take advantage of the opportunities to waste cycles that we'll get from new, faster hardware?
  3. How far will this flattening of data structures go? I can think of possibilities that shock even me, with my conscientiously broadened mind. Will we get rid of arrays, for example? After all, they're just a subset of hash tables where the keys are vectors of integers. Will we replace hash tables themselves with lists?
  4. Could a programming language go so far as to get rid of numbers as a fundamental data type?
  5. The real question is, how far up the ladder of abstraction will parallelism go? In a hundred years will it affect even application programmers? Or will it be something that compiler writers think about, but which is usually invisible in the source code of applications?
  6. Mr. Graham states: "Inefficient software isn't gross. What's gross is a language that makes programmers do needless work. Wasting programmer time is the true inefficiency, not wasting machine time. This will become ever more clear as computers get faster.' Is it the case that optimization of code is not something that programmers should be concerned with?
• I'd like you to write this using ACM style for citations and the list of items cited. Cite at least 3 works (no encyclopedias). The essay should be between 500 and 1000 words, and written for an audience that consists of upper-level students majoring in computer science. Let me know if you have questions.
• Timetable for this assignment.
  • For Thursday, January 25: Choose a question, come up with three resources, and an outline of what you will write about. Bring it to class.
  • For Thursday, February 1: Bring a rough draft to class
• More about writing on the next page

About writing

• Use ACM style for citations http://www.library.dal.ca/subjects/csci_ref.htm
• Citations Citations should be provided according to the following guidelines. ( taken from http://www.acm.org/pubs/surveys/Authors.html#ManuscriptPreparation)
  1. Citations in the text: Reference callouts in the text have the form [Turing 1936], [Turing and Church 1936], [Turing et al. 1936].
  2. References to items in periodicals: These should take the form: author, title, journal, volume, number, date, pages. Last names of authors are given first, even for multiple authors; likewise for editors, with the name followed by (Ed.). The author's name appears in capital letters and always ends with a period, either the period which follows his initial or a period for the purpose. The title has only the first word and proper names (or their derivatives) starting with capital letters, and it ends with a period. The date is given in parentheses. Example:

     JENKINS, M. A., and TRAUB, J. F. Principles for testing zerofinding programs. ACM Trans. Math. Soft. 1, 1 (March 1975), 26-34.

  3. References to reports or proceedings: Author(s) name(s) and title (same style as above), report number, source including date and pages.
  4. References to books: Author(s) -- same style as in periodicals. Title -- set in italics, with all principal words capitalized. Include publisher, city, and year. Page or chapter references follow the year.
  5. Sequence: In the reference list, entries must be arranged alphabetically according to authors' or editors' names, or publishing organizations for items to which no names can be attached.
  6. Accuracy: Authors are responsible for checking that all information in the references is correct.
  7. Completeness: Include any and all information necessary for finding the work referenced. It is better to include more than enough information than too little.
     
• Consult/Read "The Elements of Style," http://www.bartleby.com/141/index.html, by William Strunk, Jr.
  • ELEMENTARY RULES OF USAGE
    1. Form the possessive singular of nouns with 's
    2. In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last
    3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas
    4. Place a comma before and or but introducing an independent clause
    5. Do not join independent clauses by a comma
    6. Do not break sentences in two
       In other words, do not use periods for commas.
    7. A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject
    8. Divide words at line-ends, in accordance with their formation and pronunciation
  • ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION
    9. Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic
    10. As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning
    11. Use the active voice
        The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative principally concerned with action, but in writing of any kind. Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is, or could be heard.
        

        There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground.	Dead leaves covered the ground.
        The sound of the falls could still be heard.	The sound of the falls still reached our ears.
        The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired.	Failing health compelled him to leave college.
        It was not long before he was very sorry that he had said what he had.	He soon repented his words.

    12. Put statements in positive form
        Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language.
    13. Omit needless words
        Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
    14. Avoid a succession of loose sentences
    15. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form
        This principle, that of parallel construction, requires that expressions of similar content and function should be outwardly similar. The likeness of form enables the reader to recognize more readily the likeness of content and function.
    16. Keep related words together
    17. In summaries, keep to one tense
    18. Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Ernest Ackermann Department of Computer Science, Mary Washington College
CPSC 401 | CPSC 470S

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