When

Last 10 minutes of class on Monday, July 6, 2026.

Everyone takes the exam at the same time.

Scope

Programming languages as a discipline, theories of computer science, a little logic.

Ground Rules

You will take the exam on paper. There is 10 minute time limit, or 15 minutes for those with time-and-a-half accommodations.

You may bring one sheet of paper with notes written on both sides.

Preparation Checklist

Do each of the following to maximize your preparation:

• (Optional) Go through Nicky Case’s How to Remember Everything Forever-ish.
• (Optional) Read Atul Gawande’s The Checklist.
• Review the recordings for class periods you missed, and for portions of the class sessions that you attended but feel you need to review.
• Skim or read through the provided resources on Computing, Computer Science, and Software Engineering.
• (Optional)Watch the embedded videos in the resources above.
• Work through the course notes on The Study of Programming Langauges, Theories of Computer Science, and the first half or so of Logic.
• Watch the embedded videos in the course notes above.
• Follow some of the links within the course notes to outside articles and videos. This gives you access to new material as well as additional takes on the course content.
• Practice with the recall questions on the notes above.
• (Optional)Make a pass over Gabe Robins’ A Brief History of Computing.
• Read the Preface and Chapters 1 of the textbook on BrightSpace.

Were you able to check off every box?

Things to Know

The learning objectives for the course up to this point in time include you having developed a familiarity with, and an ability to discuss:

• What the study of programming languages entails and its significance within computer science
• A little history of computer science
• The importance and usefulness of foundational theories, especially in computer science, but also in any discipline
• The scope and big ideas of each of the four theories of computer science: languages, automata, computability, and complexity
• What logic is and its role in computer science and foundational theories
• How to translate logic formulas to and from English prose

Outline of Course Content

The fact that active recall is better for acquiring long-term knowledge does not mean that outlines and concept maps are not useful. Learners should use multiple techniques—think “both and” rather than “either or.”

The Study of Programming Languages
    Greetings in several human languages
    Sum of even squares in multiple programming languages
    Why study PLs
    How to study PLs - the six dimensions
        History
        Language diversity
            Impactful languages
            Why languages were created
        Language-independent concepts
            Definitions
            Statics and Dynamics
            Big Questions
            Ontologies
                Naming
                Evaluation
                Control Flow
                Types
                Functional Abstraction
                Modularity
                Concurrency
                Metaprogramming
        Foundational theories (logic, math, information, computation)
            Logic
            Foundations of Math
                Set Theory
                Type Theory
                Category Theory
                Computation Theories
                Syntax
                Semantics
        Pragmatics
            Language Vision and Values
            Evaluation
                Technical Criteria
                Nontechnical Criteria
                Expressiveness
                Tradeoff Analysis
        Implementation

Theories of Computation, The Basics
    What is a theory?
        Organized body of knowledge with explanatory and predictive power
    Why study theory?
        To have a vocabulary for communication
        To reason from more fundamental and precise principles
        To predict and generate new knowledge
        To not flail and guess and have our thinking stuck in a box
    Big questions in computer science
        What is computation?
        What can and cannot be known through computation?
        What can and cannot be computed?
        What can and connt be efficiently computed?
    Language Theory
        Definition: how computations are expressed
        Symbols
        Alphabets
        Strings
        Languages
        Functions
    Automata Theory
        Definition: how computations are carried out
        Early computing machines
        How and why Turing came up with his machine model
        Representing a Turing Machine as a table
        Representing a Turing Machine as a state diagram
    Computability Theory
        Definition: what computations are (theoretically)possible
        Why not every function is computable
            The simple counting argument: there are more functions than programs
        Church-Turing Thesis
        The Halting Problem
    Complexity Theory
        Definition: what resources are required for computations
        Kinds of computability measures
        P vs. NP

Logic (just the first part of the notes)
    What it deals with
    Basic notation
    Encodings of various English statements

About the Problems

This is a mini-quiz which tests for immediate understanding of topics and not your ability to work out problems over an extended duration of time. There is a strict time limit so that your immediate fluency is tested rather than your ability to search the web (or worse, ask a chatbot), since these things take time. There will be 5–10 questions. Some may be multiple choice, multi-select, matching, and very short answer.

All content on the assigned readings is fair game for questions, so do not neglect the readings, and by all means do the recall questions!