EEL702: Computer System Software

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Instructor: Sumeet Agarwal
4 credits (3-0-2)
Pre-requisites: CSL201 & EEL308
Overlaps with: CSL728
I Semester 2014–15
M Th 9:30–10:50, IIA-305 (Bharti building)
TAs: Arihant Jain, Samarjeet Singh

This course covers a number of different strands. It is primarily meant to be an overview of the tools and techniques that go into developing systems software, which is software that forms the interface between user applications and the computer system. We will cover C and other programming/scripting tools which are typically used to develop such software. A substantial chunk of the course will be devoted to the theory and practice of developing programming language compilers. We will also cover some aspects of programming paradigms, object-oriented design, and touch upon modern distributed systems software such as Hadoop.

Evaluation components

• Minor I: 15% [paper] [solutions]
• Minor II: 15% [paper] [solutions]
• Major: 30% [paper]
• Assignments: 35% [1] [2] [3]
• Class participation: 5%

Planned outline

• John E. Hopcroft, Rajeev Motwani, and Jeffrey D. Ullman. Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation. Prentice Hall, 2007.
• Alfred V. Aho and Jeffrey D. Ullman. Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS). [Free online]
• Alfred V. Aho, Monica S. Lam, Ravi Sethi, and Jeffrey D. Ullman. Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (CPTT). Second Edition. Addison-Wesley, 2006.
• Keith Schwarz's CS143 Compilers course at Stanford.