Programming Language Design

Academic unit or major

Graduate major in Mathematical and Computing Science

Instructor(s)

Hidehiko Masuhara

Class Format

Lecture (Face-to-face)

Media-enhanced courses

-

Day of week/Period
(Classrooms)

5-6 Mon (W8E-306(W832)) / 5-6 Thu (W8E-306(W832))

Class

-

Course Code

MCS.T503

Number of credits

200

Course offered

2025

Offered quarter

4Q

Syllabus updated

Dec 4, 2025

Language

English

Syllabus

Course overview and goals

There are various kinds of programming languages. There are also various kinds of linguistic mechanisms. Those mechanisms are strongly motivated by requirements to improve modularity, reusability, safety, and son on, and are supported by theories of semantics, modularization, and type systems. This course aims at understanding those linguistic mechanisms at a glance so that the participants will acquire not only important points in the language designs, but also hints for software development with those programming languages.

Course description and aims

The goal of the course is to acquire an overview of the concepts in programming language designs by understanding the theoretical foundations of programming language constructs and the variations of those constructs in concrete programming languages. The course also aims at understanding the essence of programming independent of particular programming languages, by learning deep knowledge on programming languages as applications of theories of computer science.
The course focuses on "surface" language features, which are the mechanisms that the programmer directly use. In particular, the features found in object-oriented programming languages and their derivations.

Keywords

Parnas' Principle of Modularization, Information Hiding, Abstract Datatype, Liskov's Substitution Principle, Object-Orientation, Class, Inheritance, Delegation, Reusability, Design Patterns, Multiple Inheritance, Traits, Feature-Oriented Programming, Aspect-Oriented Programming, Crosscutting Concerns, Advice, Dependency Injection, Context-Oriented Programming, Layer Activations, Type Safety, Algebraic Datatypes, Subtyping, Type Inference, Polymorphic Types, The Expression Problem, Module Types, Generic Types, Templates, Metaprogramming, Macro

Competencies

• Specialist skills
• Intercultural skills
• Communication skills
• Critical thinking skills
• Practical and/or problem-solving skills

Class flow

A simple quiz is given in each class to aid students' understanding of the issues to be discussed in the class. The class will cover the background of language functions being designed, basic functions, and variation. Lecture will be held mainly in debate format. The simple quizzes are not intended for grading.

For helping non-Japanese speakers, the slides are written in English. Questions in English and request for English clarifications are welcome in the class.

Course schedule/Objectives

Study advice (preparation and review)

To enhance effective learning, students are encouraged to spend approximately 100 minutes preparing for class and another 100 minutes reviewing class content afterwards (including assignments) for each class.
They should do so by referring to textbooks and other course material.

Textbook(s)

Not specified

Reference books, course materials, etc.

Not Specified

Evaluation methods and criteria

Students are evaluated by the end-of-term assignments and an oral examination. The assignments require to experiment the concepts taught is the course by using concrete programming languages. The evaluation criteria is the degree of understandings of those concepts with respect to applications to actual programming. The oral examination questions based on the submitted report.

Related courses

• .

Prerequisites

None

Other

Students who do not speak Japanese are also welcome. The instructor will talk in Japanese, but the slides are written in English, and students can ask questions in English. Every year taught in Japanese, there were a few non Japanese speakers successfully took this class.