COMP30020: Declarative Programming

2 assessments 15% each, 70% exam

You study Haskell and then Prolog. Both are interesting, I enjoyed Haskell as it felt more like a modern language. Have been told by many to do this subject as it opens perspective as you finally learn a language that is not C like. It definitely was enjoyable. Hard to motivate without knowing a little bit about the content.

Exam had no abstract theory in it and so it was more applied theory as it was all coding questions, so if you become king at Prolog/Haskell the examination will be a breeze for you.

I enjoyed Peter (the Lecturer), however he does use a laser pointer which won't show up on lecture capture. It aids a little bit being able to see the point he's specifically talking about but you can infer usually.

1 assessment on Haskell, the other on Prolog. 160 lines of code and 100 respectively (this is including documentation). These languages make you feel powerful. They are dense languages so you do not have to write as much code but it can still take you a long time. The Prolog one was made trivial this semester because he said we were allowed to use a library and due to the nature of Prolog (that you will learn if you pick this subject) just stating the question and the constraints solves the problem for you, i.e. you don't have to write specifically on how the solution is crafted.

If you attend the tutorials, the material is just questions, that you can access at home so what tutor you get will impact the value you get from the class. I stopped attended after like 6th week but doing the questions weekly is very useful at getting actual practice on the content.

This semester was the first time we had Haskell and Prolog on Grok, (which you should have used for COMP10001?) Did its job, I used that rather than the tutes but some of the questions were recycled from Models of Computation this semester. Might change, but they were pretty good questions.

Overall a good intro to some declarative langauges.

Yes

Peter Schachte

Yes 2 were give, 1 sample. only 2010-2014 available from library.

5 Out of 5

Any Haskell intro book would get you through the first 6 weeks. I didn't use a textbook however, resources from the classes are enough.

2 lectures, 1 hour tutorial

2019 Semester 2

H1