(** * Preface *) (* $Date: 2011-06-19 12:51:02 -0400 (Sun, 19 Jun 2011) $ *) (** This electronic book is a one-semester course on _Software Foundations_ -- the mathematical theory of programming and programming languages -- suitable for graduate or upper-level undergraduate students. It develop basic concepts of functional programming, logic, operational semantics, lambda-calculus, and static type systems, using the Coq proof assistant. The main novelty of the course is that the development is formalized and machine-checked: the text is literally a script for the Coq proof assistant. It is intended to be read hand-in-hand with the accompanying Coq source file in an interactive session with Coq. All the details of the lectures are fully developed in Coq, and the exercises are designed to be worked using Coq. The files are organized into a sequence of core chapters, covering about one semester's worth of material and organized into a coherent linear narrative, plus several "appendices" covering additional topics. *) (* ###################################################################### *) (** * Overview *) (** The course weaves together several fundamental themes: - _Logic_ as the mathematical basis for software engineering: << logic calculus -------------------- = ---------------------------- software engineering mechanical/civil engineering >> In particular, inductively defined sets and relations and inductive proofs about them are ubiquitous in all of computer science. The course examines them from many angles. - _Functional programming_, an increasingly important part of the software developer's bag of tricks: - Advanced programming idioms in mainstream software development methodologies are increasingly incorporating ideas from functional programming. - In particular, using persistent data structures and avoiding mutable state enormously simplifies many concurrent programming tasks. - _Foundations of programming languages_ (the second part of the course): - Notations and techniques for rigorously describing and stress-testing new programming languages and language features. (This is a surprisingly common activity! Most large software systems include subsystems that are basically programming languages -- think of regular expressions, command-line formats, preference and configuration files, SQL, Flash, PDF, etc., etc.) - A more sophisticated understanding of the everyday tools used to build software... what's going on under the hood of . - _Coq_, an industrial-strength proof assistant: - Proof assistants are becoming more and more popular in both software and hardware industries. Coq is not the only one out there, but learning one thoroughly will give you a big advantage in coming to grips with another. *) (* ###################################################################### *) (** * Practicalities *) (* ###################################################################### *) (** ** Chapter Dependencies *) (** A diagram of the dependencies between chapters and some suggested paths through the material can be found in [deps.html]. *) (* ###################################################################### *) (** ** Required Background *) (** These notes are intended to be accessible to a broad range of readers, from advanced undergraduates to PhD students and researchers. They assume little specific background in programming languages or logic. However, a degree of mathematical maturity will be helpful. *) (* ###################################################################### *) (** * Coq *) (** Our laboratory for this course is the Coq proof assistant. Coq can be seen as a combination of two things: - a simple and slightly idiosyncratic (but, in its way, extremely expressive) _programming language_, together with - a set of tools for stating _logical assertions_ (including assertions about the behavior of programs) and marshalling evidence of their truth. We will be investigating both aspects in tandem. *) (* ###################################################################### *) (** ** System Requirements *) (** Coq runs on Windows and pretty much all flavors of Unix (including Linux and OS X). You will need: - A current installation of Coq, available from the Coq home page. (Everything is known to compile with 8.3; version 8.2 should also work.) - An IDE for interacting with Coq. Currently, there are two choices: - Proof General is an Emacs-based IDE. It tends to be preferred by users who are already comfortable with Emacs. It requires a separate installation (google "Proof General"). - CoqIDE is a simpler stand-alone IDE. It is distributed with Coq, but on some platforms compiling it involves installing additional packages for GUI libraries and such. *) (* ###################################################################### *) (** ** Access to the Coq files *) (** A tar file containing the full sources for the "release version" of these notes (as a collection of Coq scripts and HTML files) is available here: << http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/sf >> If you are using the notes as part of a class, you may be given access to a locally extended version of the files, which you should use instead of the release version. *) (* ###################################################################### *) (** * Exercises *) (** Each chapter of the notes includes numerous exercises. Some are marked "optional", some "recommended." Doing just the non-optional exercises should provide good coverage of the material in approximately six or eight hours of study time (for the longer chapters). The "star ratings" for the exercises can be interpreted as follows: - One star: easy exercises that most readers should take only a minute or two. None of these are explicitly marked "Recommended"; rather, _all_ of them should be considered as recommended: readers should be in the habit of working them as they reach them. - Two stars: straightforward exercises (five or ten minutes). - Three stars: exercises requiring a bit of thought (fifteen minutes to half an hour). - Four stars: more difficult exercises (an hour or two). *) (* ###################################################################### *) (** * Recommended Reading *) (** Some suggestions for supplemental texts can be found in the [Postscript] chapter. *) (* ###################################################################### *) (** * For Instructors *) (** If you intend to use these materials in your own course, you will undoubtedly find things you'd like to change, improve, or add. Your contributions are welcome! Please send an email to Benjamin Pierce, and we'll set you up with read/write access to our subversion repository and developers' mailing list; in the repository you'll find a [README] with further instructions. *)