1 Anticipated Frequent Questions

This AFQ (Anticipated Frequent Questions) should cover most of your questions. Please only ask questions after you’ve read the document below and not found a response to your query.

Q: What is the new format?

In your day-to-day work, you are going to confront numerous programming languages: new ones are created almost daily, and you never know which new language will become really important in your work. You therefore need the ability to rapidly dive into new languages and understand them.

However, you haven’t really been exposed to a useful mental landscape that lets you quickly understand a new language. This usually comes through practice and experience, combined with a knowledge of various points in the space of language design.

The original style of cs173—used 2000 through 2015—was (we believe) good at helping you understand a few points in the design space really well. But it didn’t cover enough of the space, nor did it give you practice with rapidly exploring a large space of designs. In 2016 we came up with a radically new way of running the course that we found addressed this problem. However, we also felt something was lost in the original style, and this was echoed in student evaluations.

We had suspected this, but weren’t sure how much time the new style of assignments would take, and didn’t want to accidentally overburden students. Fortunately, the evaluations confirmed that the assignments took less time than we expected. Therefore, we have the time to merge the two styles (making some time for it by dropping or changing assignments).

Q: What did you do before 2016?

Until 2016, the emphasis was on implementing languages through so-called “definitional interpreters”: working implementations that created the core of a language.

Q: What did you change in 2016?

The most important thing is to make you understand that approaching a new language requires a security mindset, and that’s what we want the course to inculcate. It won’t be about computer security per se, but it will be the mindset that comes with it: of probing, asking questions, looking for ways in which things might not fit together, etc.

We will achieve this through a series of what we call mystery language (ML) assignments. In an ML assignment, you are given a new language feature’s syntax and a very loose description of it. The assignment will contain (usually) three different languages that contain that new feature, each presented in terms of a black-box implementation of that language. Each language will contain this new feature but will define it to behave in a somewhat different way. You will need to use the implementations to explore how the feature varies across the languages and try to pin down the differences precisely.

For instance, suppose the new feature is array dereference, and you’re given a notation for it such as a[i] where a evaluates to an array and i is an expression computing the array index. When i is within the bounds of the array, all three languages might behave identically. But when i is out-of-bounds, one language might signal an error (like Java does), another might return a special undefined value (like JavaScript does), and the third might return the content of some other array (like C sometimes does).

These differences have all been chosen because they have significant consequences, and the class after the homework comes due, we will discuss them. Note that in the above example, to find these differences, you needed to “think like an attacker”: ask what the arrays do not when you use them as intended but rather when you use them erroneously. Of course, many ML assignments have nothing to do with errors, but it is wise to remember that those are also worth checking.

What we’re getting at is essentially the heart of the Scientific Method. You perform some observations; using these, you formulate an initial theory; you use the theory to suggest additional experiments. If an experiment fails, then you have to revise your theory and try again. As more experiments succeed, you gain greater and greater faith in your theory. At some point you conclude you’re sufficiently satisfied with your theory, you clean up your work, and you turn it in.

Q: Were there other issues you were trying to address in 2016?

Q: So the new style is a merger of these two?

That’s correct. There will be a whole bunch of mystery languages. There will also be more definitional interpreters than in 2016, but not at all as many as in preceding years. We will also implement some other tools to help you understand some patterns in programming language tools as well as in language expressive power.

Q: How much time will things take?

For the mystery languages, specifically: we ask that if you spend more than five hours on a homework, stop; talk to the course staff; make sure you’re on the right track. We may tell you you’re on the right track and to continue; we may tell you you’re on the wrong path and help set you right; or we may tell you you’ve gotten the point of the assignment and should stop.

For the other (implementation) assignments, your usual internal cues on programming apply.

Q: What are “Core”, “Advanced”, and “Prank”?

In the mystery language assignments, you may see the different languages labeled differently. Every assignment has (usually three) Core languages. These reflect the most common or important variations in these features. The array dereference example described above presents three such variations.

Sometimes, there are variations that have made it into real languages but are less important or harder to find. We label these Advanced. For instance, in array dereferencing, a negative index, instead of being an error, could mean “that many indices from the end of the array”. We would consider this an Advanced (but a somewhat straightforward one for people familiar with certain languages that have this behavior). Before you tackle any Advanceds, make sure you’ve nailed down the differences between the Cores! Also, be aware that the Advanceds may take a little or a lot more time than a core.

On very rare instances, an assignment might also have Prank languages. This is usually us re-implementing for you especially bizarre behaviors found in some language. You should only try to classify these languages if you’re really bored or really want to show off your language hacking skills. (Under no circumstances will we expect you to get any of them to get an A in the course.) As an example, there was once a bug in a well-known browser where dereferencing the index -6 would return the value of eval, a dangerous primitive that many Web sandboxes do their best to hide. If we were to provide an implementation of this, we’d certainly classify it as a Prank.

Q: So you’ve never done this particular mixture before?

Not really. We’ve done interpreters extensively. We’ve done mystery languages once, with a bit of interpreters. The hybrid approach is new here, and not done at courses anywhere else either, as far as we know.

Of course, we’ve put a lot of thought into this and think we understand the benefits and pitfalls. We therefore think it’ll go well. We’re pretty confident that even if it doesn’t go exactly to plan, you will learn enough from it that it’ll have been worth the while.

Still, it’s an experiment. As with all experiments, some things might not go exactly to plan. We want your thoughts and will take your feedback very seriously. But please do be a bit patient as we work it out.

Q: Can you make me feel good about participating in an experiment?

Sure. You’re at a research university, not an undergrad-only liberal arts college. We constantly innovate in both research and education. Some attempts at innovation fail. Others, after a few tries, become wildly successful, and are adopted later by many other institutions—but you get to have not only seen but also benefited from them first, long before anyone else.

Also, cs173 has made numerous experiments along the way, and most of them have worked very well.

Q: I have a question not answered above! Where do I send it?

A: Address it to the professor.