CS4400 Spring 2025 Course Notes🔗

Steven Holtzen <s.holtzen@northeastern.edu>

This webpage contains the course notes for the Spring 2025 offering of CS4400/5400. See the left column for links to the notes for each lecture.

Course outline:

• Module 1: The Lambda Calculus

  • Course Overview and Calculator Language

  • Syntax and Semantics

  • Let Language and Substitution

  • The Lambda Calculus

  • Church Encoding

  • Formalisms: Big and Small-Step Semantics

  • Recursion

• Module 2: Types

  • Simple Types and Type Checkers

  • Simply-Typed Lambda Calculus

  • Parametric Polymorphism and System-F

  • Programming in System-F

  • Subtyping

• Module 3: Control and Effects

  • Tail Form and Continuations

  • Continuation-passing Interpreters

  • Continuation-passing Style

  • Effects and Effect Handlers

  • Monads

• Module 4: Intensional Behavior

  • Abstract Machines (CK, CEK, CESK)

  • Memory Management and Safety

• Module 5: Topics

  • Probabilistic Programming

  • Monads