Novelties in CS450

• Introduction of pattern matching in Module 2
  • less boilerplate
  • no need for getters/setters
• Introduction of TypedRacket in Module 3
  • fewer students in office hours with type mismatch issues
  • some students with type mismatch errors (easier to handle, harder to discuss the output of a test case)
  • types + monad introduce friction (poor inference algorithm), but ultimately for good cause
• Modules were redesigned to have exactly 3 lectures (trying to make workload comparable across modules)
• New module to emphasize recursion (give more time to absorb recursion)

Novelties in CS450

What was developed

• Refreshed/rewrote homework assignments HW2-9 (due to types, patten matching, and course restructuring)
• New slides/homework for module on optimized recursion (due to module restructuring; new module)
• Rewrite of slides Lecture 4-27 (due to types, pattern matching, course restructuring)
• A new homework assignment to emphasize recursion and fold (give more time to practice recursion)
• New infrastructure for test cases (group test-cases per exercise; allow turning off exercises)
• More test cases in HW7

Novelties in CS450

Redesigned exercises

• Improve the focus on homework assignments
• Approach: more exercises that introduce a new learning concept on an already known algorithm
  • Optimized recursion revisit simple recursion (new)
  • Delayed evaluation revisit optimized recursion (new)
  • Monads revisit recursion (new)
  • Iterative programming language implementation: (i) expressions, (ii) function calls, (iii) out-of-order definitions
  • JavaScript's object module reuses the concepts of Racket's definitions