BSc: Natural Language Processing

Natural Language Processing

• Course name: Natural Language Processing
• Course number: XYZ
• Subject area: Programming Languages and Software Engineering
• Version: Spring 2022

Course characteristics

What is the purpose of this course?

The Natural Language Processing course teaches

- What should a student be able to understand at the end of the course?

• How to create high quality software using mainstream concepts of programming.
• What is object-oriented programming and its main advantages
• How to increase the level of abstraction with help of genericity.
• How to create concurrent programs and what are the main issues related to this kind of programming

- What should a student be able to apply at the end of the course?

• To be able to create quality programs in Java.

Course evaluation

Course grade breakdown

		Proposed points
Labs/seminar classes	40	40
Interim performance assessment	30	30
Exams	30	30

If necessary, please indicate freely your course’s features in terms of students’ performance assessment:

Labs/seminar classes:

• In-class participation 1 point for each individual contribution in a class but not more than 1 point a week (i.e. 14 points in total for 14 study weeks),
• overall course contribution (to accumulate extra-class activities valuable to the course progress, e.g. a short presentation, book review, very active in-class participation, etc.) up to 6 points.

Interim performance assessment:

• in-class tests up to 10 points for each test (i.e. up to 40 points in total for 2 theory and 2 practice tests),
• computational practicum assignment up to 10 points for each task (i.e. up to 30 points for 3 tasks).

Exams:

• mid-term exam up to 30 points,
• final examination up to 30 points.

Overall score:

100 points (100%).

Grades range

Course grading range

		Proposed range
A. Excellent	85-100	85-100
B. Good	75-84	75-84
C. Satisfactory	60-75	60-75
D. Poor	0-59	0-59

If necessary, please indicate freely your course’s grading features:

• A: more than 85 of the overall score;
• B: at least 85 of the overall score;
• C: at least 75 of the overall score;
• D: less than 60 of the overall score.

Course Sections

The main sections of the course and approximate hour distribution between them is as follows:

Course Sections

Section	Section Title	Lectures	Seminars	Self-study	Knowledge
Number		(hours)	(labs)		evaluation
1	Introduction to programming	12	6	12	2
2	Introduction to object-oriented programming	8	4	8	1
3	Introduction to generics, exception handling and programming by contract (C)	8	4	8	1
4	Introduction to programming environments	12	6	12	2
5	Introduction to concurrent and functional programming	8	4	8	1
Final examination					2

Section 1

Section title:

Introduction to programming

Topics covered in this section:

• Basic definitions – algorithm, program, computer, von Neumann architecture, CPU lifecycle.
• Programming languages history and overview. Imperative (procedural) and functional approaches.
• Translation – compilation vs. interpretation. JIT, AOT. Hybrid modes.
• Introduction to typification. Static and dynamic typing. Type inference. Basic types – integer, real, character, boolean, bit. Arrays and strings. Records-structures.
• Programming – basic concepts. Statements and expressions. 3 atomic statements - assignment, if-check, goto. Control structures – conditional, assignment, goto, case-switch-inspect, loops.
• Variables and constants.
• Routines – procedures and functions.

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 1
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 0
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 1
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. What is the difference between compiler and interpreter?
2. What is the difference between type and variable?
3. What is the background of structured programming?

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. How to compile a program?
2. How to run a program?
3. How to debug a program?

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. What are the basic control structure of structured programming?
2. What is the difference between statements and expressions?
3. What are the benefits of type inference?

Section 2

Section title:

Introduction to object-oriented programming

Topics covered in this section:

• Key principles of object-oriented programming
• Overloading is not overriding
• Concepts of class and object
• How objects can be created?
• Single and multiple inheritance

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 1
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 1
Testing (written or computer based) & 0
Reports & 1
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 1
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. What is the meaning of polymorphism?
2. How to check the dynamic type of an object?
3. What are the limitations of single inheritance?
4. What are the issues related with multiple inheritance?

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. How to handle array of objects of some class type?
2. How to implement the class which logically has to have 2 constructors with the same signature but with different semantics?

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. Name all principles of object-oriented programming?
2. Explain what conformance means?
3. Explain why cycles are prohibited in the inheritance graph?

Section 3

Section title:

Introduction to generics, exception handling and programming by contract (C)

Topics covered in this section:

• Introduction to generics
• Introduction to exception handling
• Introduction to programming by contract (C)

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 1
Testing (written or computer based) & 0
Reports & 0
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 1
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. What is constrained genericity?
2. What is exception?
3. What is assertion?

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. How constrained genericity may be used for sorting of objects?
2. In which order catch blocks are being processed?
3. Where is the problem when precondition is violated?

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. Can array be treated as generic class?
2. What is the difference between throw and throws in Java?
3. What is purpose of the class invariant?

Section 4

Section title:

Introduction to programming environments

Topics covered in this section:

• Concept of libraries as the basis for reuse.
• Concept of interfaces/API. Separate compilation.
• Approaches to software documentation.
• Persistence. Files.
• How to building a program. Recompilation problem. Name clashes, name spaces

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 0
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 0
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 1
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. How reuse helps to develop software?
2. How concept of libraries and separate compilation co-relate?
3. What are the benefits of integrating documentation into the source code?
4. Why is it essential to have persistent data structures?

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. What is to be done to design and develop a library?
2. How to add documenting comments into the source code?
3. What ways exists in Java to support persistence ?

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. How to deal with name clashes?
2. What is the main task of the recompilation module?
3. What are the differences between different formats of persistence files?

Section 5

Section title:

Introduction to concurrent and functional programming

Topics covered in this section:

• Concurrent programming.
• Functional programming within imperative programming languages.

What forms of evaluation were used to test students’ performance in this section?

|a|c| & Yes/No
Development of individual parts of software product code & 0
Homework and group projects & 1
Midterm evaluation & 0
Testing (written or computer based) & 1
Reports & 0
Essays & 0
Oral polls & 1
Discussions & 1

Typical questions for ongoing performance evaluation within this section

1. Explain the key differences parallelism and concurrency
2. What are the key issues related to parallel execution?
3. What are the models of parallel execution?
4. What is the difference between function and object?

Typical questions for seminar classes (labs) within this section

1. Which Java construction support concurrency?
2. What is a thread?
3. What is in-line lambda function?

Test questions for final assessment in this section

1. What is the meaning of SIMD and MIMD?
2. What are the implications of the Amdahl’s law?
3. What model of concurrency Java relies on?
4. Which function can be considered as pure?
5. How to declare a function to accept a functional object as its argument?
6. How Java supports high-order functions?
7. How capturing variables works in Java?