Getting Started

Black-Box Abstraction

Welcome to CS302
Paradigms of Programming

1 / 25
 Getting Started
Black-Box Abstraction

Must Read textbooks:- SICP (pdf available online)

2 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

CS302 is a computer science course.

3 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

CS302 is a computer science course.

Really?

3 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

CS302 is a computer science course.

Really?
▶ Is it science?

3 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

CS302 is a computer science course.

Really?
▶ Is it science?
▶ Is it about computers?

3 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

CS302 is a computer science course.

Really?
▶ Is it science?
▶ Is it about computers?
▶ Is it fiction?

3 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

CS302 is a computer science course.

Really?
▶ Is it science?
▶ Is it about computers?
▶ Is it fiction?
▶ Is it engineering?

3 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

CS302 is a computer science course.

Really?
▶ Is it science?
▶ Is it about computers?
▶ Is it fiction?
▶ Is it engineering?

3 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

This course will aim at formalizing intuitions about process (to be

precise ’computational processes’). How should one go about doing
things?

A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer’s idea of a

spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at
all.

4 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

This course will aim at formalizing intuitions about process (to be

precise ’computational processes’). How should one go about doing
things?

A computational process is indeed much like a sorcerer’s idea of a

spirit. It cannot be seen or touched. It is not composed of matter at
all.

However, it is/appears very real. Why?

4 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

A computational process, in a correctly working computer, executes

programs precisely and accurately.

Well-designed computational systems, like well-designed automobiles

or nuclear reactors, are designed in a modular manner, so that the
parts can be constructed, replaced, and debugged separately.

The modules are ideal modules in the sense that if the behaviour of
each of the modules is known, then the behaviour of any
combination of such ideal modules can also be accurately predicted,
unlike modules of real world objects say for example an amplifier.

5 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

A procedure is a pattern of rules which directs a process. We need

an appropriate language for describing processes, and we will use for
this purpose the programming language Lisp.

We are going to use the programming language Scheme (a dialect

of Lisp) to teach you some big ideas in computer science.

The ideas are mostly about control of complexity that is, about how
to develop a large computer program without being swamped in
details.

6 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

Scheme has unique features that make it an excellent medium for

studying important programming constructs and for relating them
to the linguistic features that support them.

The most significant of these features is the fact that Scheme’s

descriptions of processes, called procedures, can themselves be
represented and manipulated as data.

There are powerful program-design techniques that rely on the

ability to blur the traditional distinction between “passive” data and
“active” processes.

7 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

Query: “I am right now at CV Raman guest house. How do I reach the

class where CS302 is being conducted ?”

Imperative response
Use the outer peripheral road to reach A9 building. Find the road adjacent
to the guard post and walk along the academic block road to until you
reach the end of the road. Walk 3 flights of stairs of the last building on
your right. Find the first room on the ground floor.
vs
Declarative response
Come to A17-1A.

8 / 25
 Computational Process
Getting Started
Why Scheme?
Black-Box Abstraction
Imperative vs Declarative Knowledge

Query: “I am right now at CV Raman guest house. How do I reach the

class where CS302 is being conducted ?”

Imperative response
Use the outer peripheral road to reach A9 building. Find the road adjacent
to the guard post and walk along the academic block road to until you
reach the end of the road. Walk 3 flights of stairs of the last building on
your right. Find the first room on the ground floor.
vs
Declarative response
Come to A17-1A.

The first response gives a clear sequence of instructions to be performed in

order to reach the target location whereas the second response only gives
the target location. The second response does not restrict the path one
needs to take to reach the destination.
This difference is crucial.
8 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

A powerful language should provide the means for combining simple

ideas to form more complex ideas. Every powerful language has
three mechanisms for accomplishing this:

▶ primitive expressions:- represent the simplest entities the

language is concerned with,
▶ means of combination:- building compound entities from
simpler ones
▶ means of abstraction:- naming compound entities and
manipulating them as units.

9 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

A powerful language should provide the means for combining simple

ideas to form more complex ideas. Every powerful language has
three mechanisms for accomplishing this:

▶ primitive expressions:- represent the simplest entities the

language is concerned with,
▶ means of combination:- building compound entities from
simpler ones
▶ means of abstraction:- naming compound entities and
manipulating them as units.

These entities can be procedures or data.

Later we shall observe that they are really not so distinct.

9 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

▶ A Scheme expression is a construct that returns a value, such

as a variable reference, literal, procedure call, or conditional.

10 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

▶ A Scheme expression is a construct that returns a value, such

as a variable reference, literal, procedure call, or conditional.
▶ Expression types are categorized as primitive or derived.

10 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

▶ A Scheme expression is a construct that returns a value, such

as a variable reference, literal, procedure call, or conditional.
▶ Expression types are categorized as primitive or derived.
▶ Primitive expression types include variables and procedure calls.

10 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

▶ A Scheme expression is a construct that returns a value, such

as a variable reference, literal, procedure call, or conditional.
▶ Expression types are categorized as primitive or derived.
▶ Primitive expression types include variables and procedure calls.
▶ Derived expression types are not semantically primitive, but can
instead be explained in terms of the primitive constructs. They
are redundant in the strict sense of the word, but they capture
common patterns of usage, and are therefore provided as
convenient abbreviations.

10 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

▶ A Scheme expression is a construct that returns a value, such

as a variable reference, literal, procedure call, or conditional.
▶ Expression types are categorized as primitive or derived.
▶ Primitive expression types include variables and procedure calls.
▶ Derived expression types are not semantically primitive, but can
instead be explained in terms of the primitive constructs. They
are redundant in the strict sense of the word, but they capture
common patterns of usage, and are therefore provided as
convenient abbreviations.
▶ Numerical constants, string constants, character constants,
boolean constants etc.. are some examples of primitive
expressions.

10 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

▶ A Scheme expression is a construct that returns a value, such

as a variable reference, literal, procedure call, or conditional.
▶ Expression types are categorized as primitive or derived.
▶ Primitive expression types include variables and procedure calls.
▶ Derived expression types are not semantically primitive, but can
instead be explained in terms of the primitive constructs. They
are redundant in the strict sense of the word, but they capture
common patterns of usage, and are therefore provided as
convenient abbreviations.
▶ Numerical constants, string constants, character constants,
boolean constants etc.. are some examples of primitive
expressions.

10 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

Expressions such as these, formed by delimiting a list of expressions

within parentheses in order to denote procedure application, are
called combinations.

The leftmost element in the list is called the operator, and the other
elements are called operands.

11 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

Expressions such as these, formed by delimiting a list of expressions

within parentheses in order to denote procedure application, are
called combinations.

The leftmost element in the list is called the operator, and the other
elements are called operands.

The value of a combination is obtained by applying the procedure

specified by the operator to the arguments that are the values of the
operands.

11 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

Even with complex expressions, the interpreter always operates in

the same basic cycle:

It reads an expression from the terminal, evaluates the expression,

and prints the result.

This mode of operation is often expressed by saying that the

interpreter runs in a read-eval-print loop or REPL in short.

Notice that it is not necessary to explicitly instruct the interpreter to

print the value of the expression.

12 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

The convention of placing the operator to the left of the operands is

known as prefix notation.

Main advantage is that it can accommodate procedures that may

take an arbitrary number of arguments.

13 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

The convention of placing the operator to the left of the operands is

known as prefix notation.

Main advantage is that it can accommodate procedures that may

take an arbitrary number of arguments.

A second advantage of prefix notation is that it extends in a

straight-forward way to allow combinations to be nested, that is, to
have combinations whose elements are themselves combinations:

13 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

The convention of placing the operator to the left of the operands is

known as prefix notation.

Main advantage is that it can accommodate procedures that may

take an arbitrary number of arguments.

A second advantage of prefix notation is that it extends in a

straight-forward way to allow combinations to be nested, that is, to
have combinations whose elements are themselves combinations:

The real reason, however stems from its relationship with lambda
calculus.
13 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

A programming language must provide way(s) to use names as a

means to refer to computational objects.

define is scheme’s simplest means of abstraction, for it allows us to

use simple names to refer to the results of compound operations. In
general, computational objects may have very complex structure.

14 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

The ability to associate values with symbols and later retrieving

them means that the interpreter must maintain some sort of
memory to keep track of the name-object pairs.

This memory is called the environment (more precisely the global

environment).

A computation may involve a number of different environments used

by various local procedures.

15 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

To evaluate a combination, do the following:

1. Evaluate the subexpressions of the combination.
2. Apply the procedure that is the value of the leftmost
subexpression (the operator) to the arguments that are the
values of the other subexpressions (the operands).
Notice that the procedure to evaluate a combination is recursive.

Evaluation of (* (+ 2 (* 4 6)) (+ 3 5 7))

16 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

Observe that the repeated application of the first step brings us to

the point where we need to evaluate, not combinations, but
primitive expressions such as numerals, built-in operators, or other
names.
We take care of the primitive cases by stipulating that
▶ the values of numerals(i.e 54, 2.6) are the numbers that they
name,
▶ the values of built-in operators (i.e. +, *) are the machine
instruction sequences that carry out the corresponding
operations, and
▶ the values of other names (i.e apple) are the objects associated
with those names in the environment.
The environment plays a crucial role in determining the meaning of
the symbols in expressions. As these symbols may have different
meaning within various procedures.
17 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

Notice that the evaluation rule (i.e. operator followed by operands

to be processed) given above does not handle definitions.

For instance, evaluating (define apple 5) does not apply define to

two arguments, one of which is the value of the symbol apple and
the other of which is 5, since the purpose of the define is precisely
to associate apple with a value.

18 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

Notice that the evaluation rule (i.e. operator followed by operands

to be processed) given above does not handle definitions.

For instance, evaluating (define apple 5) does not apply define to

two arguments, one of which is the value of the symbol apple and
the other of which is 5, since the purpose of the define is precisely
to associate apple with a value.

Such exceptions to the general evaluation rule are called special

forms. Each special form has its own evaluation rule.

18 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

The various kinds of expressions (each with its associated evaluation

rule) constitute the syntax of the programming language.

In comparison with most other programming languages, Scheme has

a very simple syntax; that is, the evaluation rule for expressions can
be described by a simple general rule together with specialized rules
for a small number of special forms.

19 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

Procedure definition is a powerful abstraction technique by which a

compound operation can be given a name and then referred to as a
unit.

20 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

▶ The first command uses notation from lambda calculus to

define a procedure which takes a variable x and returns its
square.

21 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

▶ The first command uses notation from lambda calculus to

define a procedure which takes a variable x and returns its
square.

▶ The second command shows how to use that procedure by

providing an input to that procedure which then produces the
desired output.

21 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

For convenience, one needs to assign a name to these procedures.

There is an alternative way to define such a procedure. Special

syntactic forms that are simply convenient alternative surface
structures for things that can be written in more uniform ways are
sometimes called syntactic sugar.

22 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

The general form of a procedure definition is

(define (<name> <formal parameters>) <body>)

▶ <name> is a symbol to be associated with the procedure

definition in the environment.
▶ The <formal parameters> are the names used within the body
of the procedure to refer to the corresponding arguments of the
procedure.
▶ The <body> is an expression that will yield the value of the
procedure application when the formal parameters are replaced
by the actual arguments to which the procedure is applied.

23 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

The <name> and <formal parameters> are grouped within

parentheses, just as they would be in an actual call to the procedure
being defined. i.e (square x)

Compound procedures are used in exactly the same way as primitive

procedures.

For example, the “square” procedure behaves as though it is a

primitive procedure and any compound procedure built using square
also behaves like a primitive procedure.

24 / 25
 Primitive Expressions
Naming and Environment
Getting Started
Evaluating Combinations
Black-Box Abstraction
Compound Procedures
Evaluation order/ Substitution model

To evaluate a combination whose operator names a compound

procedure, the interpreter follows much the same process as for
combinations whose operators name primitive procedures i.e.

To apply a compound procedure to arguments, evaluate the body of

the procedure with each formal parameter replaced by the
corresponding argument.

25 / 25