Introduction to Compiler Construction

(CIS 400 (a Special Topics course) at Syracuse U)

Note: parts of this syllabus are subject to change with adequate notice to students.

An introduction to the design and engineering of compilers for modern (particularly functional) programming languages. The course will consist of a semester-long (through five automatically-graded and one final) project wherein students build a compiler from (a significant subset of) Scheme to LLVM assembly code. Course delivery will be lecture-based, with occasionaly-assigned videos (from the companion course CIS352) but classtime will also focus significantly on helping students develop their engineering and debugging skills along with giving directed help (i.e., hints) about how to achieve the project.

Grading

• 5 autograder projects (50% total, 10% each)
  • Projects will be handed out and graded via autograder.org. Students will receive a password in the first week of class. If you have not yet received a password and need one, please email me (kkmicins@syr.edu).
• 2 take-home midterms (30% total, 15% each)
  • Consisting of several open-ended questions to be answered in professionally-written thoughtful prose, relying upon examples when necessary.
  • Students may collaborate with up to two other students (i.e., max group size of three students) under the following policy. Each student submitting an answer collaboratively will be briefly quizzed (via Zoom or Slack) to explain portions of their solution. I (instructor) reserve the right to lower a group member’s grade if they are not able to sufficiently explain their solution. I will specifically not be adversarially quizzing students on all fine-grained details of the solution, nor do I expect every student to do a precisely-equal amount of the work, but I expect that every student can at least explain the work they submit as part of a group.
• 1 final project (20%)
  • This project is a wrap-up of your previous project milestones into an end-to-end compiler. Each of the autograder projects is tested independently to avoid penalizing students for compound error induced by a bug in a part of their compiler not being assessed on the project at hand. Thus, the final project will have students combine each of these passes into an end-to-end compiler along with adding a feature of their choosing (will be discussed in class, must be approved by instructor).
• Bonus +5% participation
  • I will sporadically announce various opportunities for 1% participation credit. You may earn up to 5% this way. You will earn no additional points once you saturate your 5% for the semester.

Grade cutoffs

I anticipate this will be course that will require a serious (but not overwhelming) amount of work from you, but I think there are many paths to getting a good grade. Below are projected rough grade cutoffs. However, I am making no guarantees about these at all for now (although I will likely not make grading any harder than this). I will announce final grade cutoffs roughly two weeks before the end of the term on Slack (and then update them here).

• 91% – A
• 88% – A-
• 84% – B+
• 80% – B
• 76% – B-
• 73% – C+
• 68% – C
• 64% – C-
• 55% – D
• 0% – F

Autograder

Projects in this course will be graded by an automatic grader. I may adjust projects so that portions of the projects include style-based grading, though I will not employ subjective grading. More pointedly: I will not award partial credit for solutions that have the right ideas but do not pass our tests.

Late Projects and Extensions

I used to extend project deadlines, but I have found that it severely limits course pacing in a seriously detrimental way. Therefore, project extensions will be rare–and only in the event of things such as university closures. Project extensions for students will not be granted except for religious observances and extenuating circumstances (family illness, etc..). However, there is a late policy, written as follows:

• Projects turned in on time will earn a maximum of 100%

• Projects turned in up to 72 hours late will have a 15% penalty applied.

• Projects turned in after 72 hours late (until the end of the term) will have a 30% penalty applied.

• Your project grade always be the maximum possible. For example, let’s say you make an on-time project submission for 60%, but the next day you turn in a project which earns an 75%. This submission would earn a 63.75%. Five days after the deadline you turn in a project earning 100%. Your final score is 70%, as the 70% (100% with a 30% penalty) still got the maximum grade of any submission.

You should be able to earn at least a 70% on all of the projects with enough work.

Collaboration and the Honor Code

• Assignments and exams must be completed alone, without exception.

• Specifically, you must never send your code to anyone or allow anyone to watch you code, obtain your code, study your code, copy your code, etc… We expect you will take reasonable precautious to ensure the secrecy of your solutions.

• The autograder employs elaborate cheat-detection techniques. These techniques will compare your code to other students’ submissions, along with students from previous years. The TAs will be using these features to periodically scan for students who are cheating. Past experience shows us that this system is very robust, and has allowed us to detect several large clusters of collaborating students. We hope that specification-based grading will assuage this.

• All apparent cases (with credible evidence, as determined by lead instructor) of academic dishonesty will be reported, even if the student believes they made an honest mistake, or no mistake at all. We understand honor violations are stressful processes, and thus we strive to only submit honor code cases when we believe there is clear evidence that the honor board should review our findings independently.

• You may collaborate, to any degree you want, with anyone (even outside of your group) on participation coding exercises. These will be clearly labeled, and are specifically not the course projects (which explicitly disallow any form of collaboration).

• While we recommend you discuss the project specification with your peers, you should basically never be getting help from peers about your code. In particular, you should never be showing another student your project code. If you do discuss coding about the project with another student, it should only be in the abstract (e.g., “can you use operator overloading to implement that?” or “do you think it would be sensible to implement this with map?”) and not particularized to your codebase. We understand that this can be a challenging line to walk, and thus, we recommend the following heuristic: when talking to other students about code, discuss mostly the in-class exercises and participation coding exercises.

• Cite all help other than the professor, T.A., and required/recommended text (you are allowed to cite those if you wish, but it is not required unless you are specifically told otherwise); note that proper citation is sufficient to avoid any charge of academic dishonesty, and we will not be particularly focused on copyright law during lab work.

Again: You should never share code with another student. This includes both sending a file to another student and “over the shoulder” copying (even when, e.g., variable names are changed, etc..). In the eyes of the instructor, these are both equally bad. You should never be sitting and helping another along by writing their code. By doing so you are both violating the honor policy and disadvanting the student you are helping (as they may not then properly learn the material).

Student Support

Syracuse University values diversity and inclusion; we are committed to a climate of mutual respect and full participation. There may be aspects of the instruction or design of this course that result in barriers to your inclusion and full participation in this course. I invite any student to meet with me to discuss strategies and/or accommodations (academic adjustments) that may be essential to your success and to collaborate with the Office of Disability Services (ODS) in this process.

If you would like to discuss disability-accommodations or register with ODS, please visit their website at http://disabilityservices.syr.edu. Please call (315) 443-4498 or email disabilityservices@syr.edu for more detailed information.

ODS is responsible for coordinating disability-related academic accommodations and will work with the student to develop an access plan. Since academic accommodations may require early planning and generally are not provided retroactively, please contact ODS as soon as possible to begin this process.

Accreditation

As part of the regular ABET accreditation process for the undergraduate program in computer science, I may be collecting samples of students’ work in each of our undergraduate classes. As a result, some of your labs/homeworks/exams may be photocopied/scanned (or electronically copied) to be presented for accreditation at some later point.

Student Mental Health

Mental health and overall well-being are significant predictors of academic success. As such it is essential that during your college experience you develop the skills and resources effectively to navigate stress, anxiety, depression and other mental health concerns. Please familiarize yourself with the range of resources the Barnes Center provides (https://ese.syr.edu/bewell) and seek out support for mental health concerns as needed. Counseling services are available 24/7, 365 days a year, at 315.443.8000.

Discrimination and Harassment

The University does not discriminate and prohibits harassment or discrimination related to any protected category including creed, ethnicity, citizenship, sexual orientation, national origin, sex, gender, pregnancy, disability, marital status, age, race, color, veteran status, military status, religion, sexual orientation, domestic violence status, genetic information, gender identity, gender expression or perceived gender.

Any complaint of discrimination or harassment related to any of these protected bases should be reported to Sheila Johnson-Willis, the Universitys Chief Equal Opportunity & Title IX Officer. She is responsible for coordinating compliance efforts under various laws including Titles VI, VII, IX and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. She can be contacted at Equal Opportunity, Inclusion, and Resolution Services, 005 Steele Hall, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244-1120; by email: titleix@syr.edu; or by telephone: 315-443-0211.

If you notice any incidents of harassment or discrimination, however minor, please email me. You may wish to use an anonymous email service such as https://anonymousemail.me/. Please feel free to tell me as much as you feel comfortable. I am a mandatory Title IX reporter and must report incidents such as sexual harassment, relationship violence, stalking, etc…

Slack

Slack is an instant messaging app for teams. We’ll be using it for most course management. This is the best place to get in touch with me for one-off questions, ask for an appointment for office hours, etc.. Email me if you have not been invited to the course Slack.