CS450: High-level Languages
UMass Boston, Spring 2026
Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0500
Hi Students,
Welcome to CS450! I am looking forward to the semester.
To ensure a smooth start, please fill out this pre-class survey as soon as you can. To access the survey, you need to use Google sign-in with your (full umb.edu) UMB email. This means you must sign out of other Google/Gmail accounts first, or open the link in an incognito window.
One piece of information I need right away is your GitHub account (create one if you don’t have one already). This is needed to do homework. The other survey questions will allow me to address any additional concerns as soon as possible.
Note that CS220 (Discrete Math) and CS310 (Advanced Data Structures and Algorithms) are pre-requisites of this course.
See you in the first class!
Last updated: Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:31:08 -0400
Schedule (subject to change):
11:00AM - 12:15PM, McCormack M02-0423
Readings from: How to Design Programs, 2ed
# | Date | Topic | Reading | HW out |
no class | 1/27 Tue | Snow Day | ||
1 | 1/29 Thu | What Are Higher Level Languages? [ppt] | ||
2 | 2/3 Tue | Logistics, Arithmetic Computation, Style [ppt] | ||
2/5 Thu | Add/Drop Ends | |||
3 | 2/5 Thu | Design Recipe, Incremental Programming [ppt] | ||
4 | 2/10 Tue | "big bang", Testing, Contracts [ppt] | ||
5 | 2/12 Thu | Kinds of Data Definitions, Templates [ppt] | ||
no class | 2/16 Mon | President’s Day | ||
6 | 2/17 Tue | Compound Data, structs [ppt] | ||
7 | 2/19 Thu | Programming With Compound Data [ppt] | ||
no class | 2/24 Tue | Snow Day | ||
8 | 2/26 Thu | FP vs OO Programming? [ppt] | ||
9 | 3/3 Tue | Recursive Data Definitions [ppt] | ||
10 | 3/5 Thu | List fns, Abstraction [ppt] | ||
11 | 3/10 Tue | Abstraction Recipe [ppt] | ||
12 | 3/12 Thu | Accumulators [ppt] | ||
no class | 3/17 Tue | Spring Break | ||
no class | 3/19 Thu | Spring Break | ||
13 | 3/24 Tue | Tree Data Definitions [ppt] | ||
14 | 3/26 Thu | Intertwined Data, S-expressions [ppt] | Ch19-20 | |
15 | 3/31 Tue | ASTs and parsing [ppt] | ||
16 | 4/2 Thu | Interpreters and eval [ppt] | ||
17 | 4/7 Tue | type conversions, truthiness [ppt] | Ch21,23 | |
18 | 4/9 Thu | variables, environments, scope [ppt] | Ch21.2 | |
19 | 4/14 Tue | function calls [ppt] | Ch21.3 | |
20 | 4/16 Thu | lambda functions [ppt] | Ch21.3 | |
no class | 4/20 Mon | Patriots Day | ||
21 | 4/21 Tue | Ch16-17 | ||
4/23 Thu | Course P/F/Withdraw Deadline | |||
22 | 4/23 Thu | implementing recursion, mutation [ppt] | Ch21.3 | |
23 | 4/28 Tue | Generative Recursion, Tail Calls [ppt] | Ch25-27 | |
24 | 4/30 Thu | Type Systems [ppt] | ||
25 | 5/5 Tue | Type Checking lambda, recursion | ||
26 | 5/7 Thu | Lambda Calc Recursion - YCombinator | Ch17 | 13 |
27 | 5/12 Tue | The Design Recipe in the Real World?? | ||
no class | 5/14 Thu | Study Period | ||
no class | 5/19 Tue | Final Exam Period | ||
no class | 5/21 Thu | Final Exam Period | ||
no class | 5/29 Fri | Grades Released |