public_html: msc-projects-14.html@37afaead31dd (annotated)

297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	1	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
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6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	3	<HEAD>
333 846966afdad1 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 331 diff changeset	4	<TITLE>2014/15 MSc Projects</TITLE>
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	5	<BASE HREF="http://www.inf.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/">
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6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	7	<link rel="stylesheet" href="nominal.css">
300 bd70a062ebb2 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 298 diff changeset	8	<script type="text/javascript" src="http://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/MathJax.js?config=TeX-AMS-MML_HTMLorMML">
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	9	</script>
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6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	15	ALINK="#FF0000"
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6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	17
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	18
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	19
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	20	<TABLE WIDTH="100%"
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6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	24	CELLPADDING="10"
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	25	CELLSPACING="2"
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	26	RULES="all">
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	27
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	28	<TR>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	29	<TD BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"
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6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	32
333 846966afdad1 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 331 diff changeset	33	<H2>2014/15 MSc Projects</H2>
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	34	<H4>Supervisor: Christian Urban</H4>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	35	<H4>Email: christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk, Office: Strand Building S1.27</H4>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	36	<H4>If you are interested in a project, please send me an email and we can discuss details. Please include
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	37	a short description about your programming skills and Computer Science background in your first email.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	38	I will also need your King's username in order to book the project for you. Thanks.</H4>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	39
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	40	<H4>Note that besides being a lecturer at the theoretical end of Computer Science, I am also a passionate
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	41	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)">hacker</A> …
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	42	defined as “a person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	43	stretching their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum
353 51b372b43487 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 352 diff changeset	44	necessary.” I am always happy to supervise like-minded students.
51b372b43487 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 352 diff changeset	45
51b372b43487 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 352 diff changeset	46	<p>In 2013/14, I was nominated by the students
352 a14d0e23120e updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 351 diff changeset	47	for the best BSc project supervisor and best MSc project supervisor awards in the NMS faculty. Somehow I won both ;o)</H4>
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	48
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	49	<ul class="striped">
342 699d7815bf17 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 341 diff changeset	50	<li> <H4>[CU1] Regular Expression Matching, Lexing and Derivatives</H4>
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	51
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	52	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	53	<B>Description:</b>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	54	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression">Regular expressions</A>
334 3238418b70ca updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 333 diff changeset	55	are extremely useful for many text-processing tasks, such as finding patterns in texts,
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	56	lexing programs, syntax highlighting and so on. Given that regular expressions were
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	57	introduced in 1950 by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Cole_Kleene">Stephen Kleene</A>,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	58	you might think regular expressions have since been studied and implemented to death. But you would definitely be
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	59	mistaken: in fact they are still an active research area. For example
312 9506d4bc0a08 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 311 diff changeset	60	<A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/regex-parsing-derivatives.pdf">this paper</A>
315 4c8ecc515721 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 314 diff changeset	61	about regular expression matching and derivatives was presented just last summer at the international
334 3238418b70ca updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 333 diff changeset	62	FLOPS'14 conference. The task in this project is to implement their results and use them for lexing.</p>
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	63
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	64	<p>The background for this project is that some regular expressions are
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	65	“<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS#Examples">evil</A>”
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	66	and can “stab you in the back” according to
315 4c8ecc515721 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 314 diff changeset	67	this <A HREF="http://peterscott.github.io/2013/01/17/regular-expressions-will-stab-you-in-the-back/">blog post</A>.
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	68	For example, if you use in <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A> or
323 5a77cc0a8126 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 322 diff changeset	69	in <A HREF="http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/">Ruby</A> (or also in a number of other mainstream programming languages according to this
313 2a98e65de47a updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 312 diff changeset	70	<A HREF="http://www.computerbytesman.com/redos/">blog</A>) the
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	71	innocently looking regular expression <code>a?{28}a{28}</code> and match it, say, against the string
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	72	<code>aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa</code> (that is 28 <code>a</code>s), you will soon notice that your CPU usage goes to 100%. In fact,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	73	Python and Ruby need approximately 30 seconds of hard work for matching this string. You can try it for yourself:
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	74	<A HREF="http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/cgi-bin/repos.cgi/afl-material/raw-file/tip/progs/re.py">re.py</A> (Python version) and
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	75	<A HREF="http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/cgi-bin/repos.cgi/afl-material/raw-file/tip/progs/re.rb">re.rb</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	76	(Ruby version). You can imagine an attacker
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	77	mounting a nice <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack">DoS attack</A> against
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	78	your program if it contains such an “evil” regular expression. Actually
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	79	<A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A> (and also Java) are almost immune from such
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	80	attacks as they can deal with strings of up to 4,300 <code>a</code>s in less than a second. But if you scale
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	81	the regular expression and string further to, say, 4,600 <code>a</code>s, then you get a <code>StackOverflowError</code>
314 906895d3a415 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 313 diff changeset	82	potentially crashing your program. Moreover (beside the "minor" problem of being painfully slow) according to this
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	83	<A HREF="http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Regex_Posix">report</A>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	84	nearly all POSIX regular expression matchers are actually buggy.
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	85	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	86
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	87	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	88	On a rainy afternoon, I implemented
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	89	<A HREF="http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/cgi-bin/repos.cgi/afl-material/raw-file/tip/progs/re3.scala">this</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	90	regular expression matcher in Scala. It is not as fast as the official one in Scala, but
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	91	it can match up to 11,000 <code>a</code>s in less than 5 seconds without raising any exception
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	92	(remember Python and Ruby both need nearly 30 seconds to process 28(!) <code>a</code>s, and Scala's
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	93	official matcher maxes out at 4,600 <code>a</code>s). My matcher is approximately
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	94	85 lines of code and based on the concept of
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	95	<A HREF="http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2293">derivatives of regular expressions</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	96	These derivatives were introduced in 1964 by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Brzozowski_(computer_scientist)">
341 c3ae73992b49 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 340 diff changeset	97	Janusz Brzozowski</A>, but according to this
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	98	<A HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~so294/documents/jfp09.pdf">paper</A> had been lost in the “sands of time”.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	99	The advantage of derivatives is that they side-step completely the usual
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	100	<A HREF="http://hackingoff.com/compilers/regular-expression-to-nfa-dfa">translations</A> of regular expressions
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	101	into NFAs or DFAs, which can introduce the exponential behaviour exhibited by the regular
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	102	expression matchers in Python and Ruby.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	103	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	104
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	105	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	106	Now the authors from the
312 9506d4bc0a08 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 311 diff changeset	107	<A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/regex-parsing-derivatives.pdf">FLOPS'14-paper</A> mentioned
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	108	above claim they are even faster than me and can deal with even more features of regular expressions
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	109	(for example subexpression matching, which my rainy-afternoon matcher cannot). I am sure they thought
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	110	about the problem much longer than a single afternoon. The task
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	111	in this project is to find out how good they actually are by implementing the results from their paper.
334 3238418b70ca updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 333 diff changeset	112	Their approach to regular expression matching is also based on the concept of derivatives.
3238418b70ca updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 333 diff changeset	113	I used derivatives very successfully once for something completely different in a
3238418b70ca updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 333 diff changeset	114	<A HREF="http://www.inf.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/Publications/rexp.pdf">paper</A>
3238418b70ca updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 333 diff changeset	115	about the <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myhill–Nerode_theorem">Myhill-Nerode theorem</A>.
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	116	So I know they are worth their money. Still, it would be interesting to actually compare their results
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	117	with my simple rainy-afternoon matcher and potentially “blow away” the regular expression matchers
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	118	in Python and Ruby (and possibly in Scala too). The application would be to implement a fast lexer for
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	119	programming languages.
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	120	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	121
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	122	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	123	<B>Literature:</B>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	124	The place to start with this project is obviously this
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	125	<A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/ppdp12-part-deriv-sub-match.pdf">paper</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	126	Traditional methods for regular expression matching are explained
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	127	in the Wikipedia articles
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	128	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DFA_minimization">here</A> and
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	129	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerset_construction">here</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	130	The authoritative <A HREF="http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/ialc.html">book</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	131	on automata and regular expressions is by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullmann (available in the library).
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	132	There is also an online course about this topic by Ullman at
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	133	<A HREF="https://www.coursera.org/course/automata">Coursera</A>, though IMHO not
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	134	done with love.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	135	Finally, there are millions of other pointers about regular expression
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	136	matching on the Web. I found the chapter on Lexing in this
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	137	<A HREF="http://www.diku.dk/~torbenm/Basics/">online book</A> very helpful.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	138	Test cases for “<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS#Examples">evil</A>”
316 116648aeeac8 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 315 diff changeset	139	regular expressions can be obtained from <A HREF="http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Regex_Posix">here</A>.
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	140
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	141	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	142
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	143	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	144	<B>Skills:</B>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	145	This is a project for a student with an interest in theory and some
335 7338cef94b2b updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 334 diff changeset	146	good programming skills. The project can be easily implemented
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	147	in functional languages like
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	148	<A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	149	F#,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	150	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_ML">ML</A>,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	151	<A HREF="http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell">Haskell</A>, etc. Python and other non-functional languages
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	152	can be also used, but seem much less convenient.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	153	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	154
298 7ad27eb1d1b8 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 297 diff changeset	155	<li> <H4>[CU2] A Compiler for a small Programming Language</H4>
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	156
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	157	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	158	<b>Description:</b>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	159	Compilers translate high-level programs that humans can read and write into
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	160	efficient machine code that can be run on a CPU or virtual machine.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	161	A compiler for a simple functional language generating X86 code is described
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	162	<A HREF="https://github.com/chameco/Shade">here</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	163	I recently implemented a very simple compiler for an even simpler functional
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	164	programming language following this
341 c3ae73992b49 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 340 diff changeset	165	<A HREF="https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/papers/tal-toplas.pdf">paper</A>
c3ae73992b49 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 340 diff changeset	166	(also described <A HREF="https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/papers/tal-tr.pdf">here</A>).
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	167	My code, written in <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>, of this compiler is
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	168	<A HREF="http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/compiler.scala">here</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	169	The compiler can deal with simple programs involving natural numbers, such
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	170	as Fibonacci numbers or factorial (but it can be easily extended - that is not the point).
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	171	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	172
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	173	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	174	While the hard work has been done (understanding the two papers above),
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	175	my compiler only produces some idealised machine code. For example I
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	176	assume there are infinitely many registers. The goal of this
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	177	project is to generate machine code that is more realistic and can
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	178	run on a CPU, like X86, or run on a virtual machine, say the JVM.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	179	This gives probably a speedup of thousand times in comparison to
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	180	my naive machine code and virtual machine. The project
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	181	requires to dig into the literature about real CPUs and generating
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	182	real machine code.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	183	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	184	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	185	An alternative is to not generate machine code, but build a compiler that compiles to
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	186	<A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">JavaScript</A>. This is the language that is supported by most
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	187	browsers and therefore is a favourite
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	188	vehicle for Web-programming. Some call it <B>the</B> scripting language of the Web.
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	189	Unfortunately, JavaScript is also probably one of the worst
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	190	languages to program in (being designed and released in a hurry). <B>But</B> it can be used as a convenient target
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	191	for translating programs from other languages. In particular there are two
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	192	very optimised subsets of JavaScript that can be used for this purpose:
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	193	one is <A HREF="http://asmjs.org">asm.js</A> and the other is
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	194	<A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki">emscripten</A>.
316 116648aeeac8 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 315 diff changeset	195	There is a <A HREF="http://kripken.github.io/emscripten-site/docs/getting_started/Tutorial.html">tutorial</A> for emscripten
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	196	and an impressive <A HREF="http://www.unrealengine.com/html5/">demo</A> which runs the
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	197	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine">Unreal Engine 3</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	198	in a browser with spectacular speed. This was achieved by compiling the
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	199	C-code of the Unreal Engine to the LLVM intermediate language and then translating the LLVM
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	200	code to JavaScript.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	201	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	202
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	203	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	204	<B>Literature:</B>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	205	There is a lot of literature about compilers
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	206	(for example <A HREF="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/cwc.html">this book</A> -
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	207	I can lend you my copy for the duration of the project, or this
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	208	<A HREF="http://www.diku.dk/~torbenm/Basics/">online book</A>). A very good overview article
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	209	about implementing compilers by
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	210	<A HREF="http://tratt.net/laurie/">Laurie Tratt</A> is
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	211	<A HREF="http://tratt.net/laurie/tech_articles/articles/how_difficult_is_it_to_write_a_compiler">here</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	212	An online book about the Art of Assembly Language is
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	213	<A HREF="http://flint.cs.yale.edu/cs422/doc/art-of-asm/pdf/">here</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	214	An introduction into x86 machine code is <A HREF="http://ianseyler.github.com/easy_x86-64/">here</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	215	Intel's official manual for the x86 instruction is
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	216	<A HREF="http://download.intel.com/design/intarch/manuals/24319101.pdf">here</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	217	A simple assembler for the JVM is described <A HREF="http://jasmin.sourceforge.net">here</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	218	An interesting twist of this project is to not generate code for a CPU, but
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	219	for the intermediate language of the <A HREF="http://llvm.org">LLVM</A> compiler
316 116648aeeac8 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 315 diff changeset	220	(also described <A HREF="http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html">here</A>). If you want to see
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	221	what machine code looks like you can compile your C-program using gcc -S.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	222	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	223	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	224	If JavaScript is chosen as a target instead, then there are plenty of <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">tutorials</A> on the Web.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	225	<A HREF="http://jsbooks.revolunet.com">Here</A> is a list of free books on JavaScript.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	226	A project from which you can draw inspiration is this
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	227	<A HREF="http://jlongster.com/2012/01/04/outlet-my-lisp-to-javascript-experiment.html">List-to-JavaScript</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	228	translator. <A HREF="https://bitbucket.org/ktg/parenjs/overview">Here</A> is another such project.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	229	And <A HREF="https://github.com/viclib/liscript">another</A> in less than 100 lines of code.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	230	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoffeeScript">Coffeescript</A> is a similar project
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	231	except that it is already quite <A HREF="http://coffeescript.org">mature</A>. And finally not to
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	232	forget <A HREF="http://www.typescriptlang.org">TypeScript</A> developed by Microsoft. The main
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	233	difference between these projects and this one is that they translate into relatively high-level
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	234	JavaScript code; none of them use the much lower levels <A HREF="http://asmjs.org">asm.js</A> and
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	235	<A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki">emscripten</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	236	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	237	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	238	<B>Skills:</B>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	239	This is a project for a student with a deep interest in programming languages and
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	240	compilers. Since my compiler is implemented in <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	241	it would make sense to continue this project in this language. I can be
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	242	of help with questions and books about <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	243	But if Scala is a problem, my code can also be translated quickly into any other functional
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	244	language.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	245	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	246
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	247	<p>
343 2bd33c5d434a updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 342 diff changeset	248	<B>PS:</B> Compiler projects consistently received high marks in the past.
335 7338cef94b2b updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 334 diff changeset	249	I have suprvised five so far and none of them received a mark below 70% - one even was awarded a prize.
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	250	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	251
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	252	<li> <H4>[CU3] Slide-Making in the Web-Age</H4>
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	253
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	254	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	255	The standard technology for writing scientific papers in Computer Science is to use
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	256	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX">LaTeX</A>, a document preparation
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	257	system originally implemented by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth">Donald Knuth</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	258	and <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Lamport">Leslie Lamport</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	259	LaTeX produces very pleasantly looking documents, can deal nicely with mathematical
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	260	formulas and is very flexible. If you are interested, <A HREF="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Word_vs._LaTeX">here</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	261	is a side-by-side comparison between Word and LaTeX (which LaTeX “wins” with 18 out of 21 points).
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	262	Computer scientists not only use LaTeX for documents,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	263	but also for slides (really, nobody who wants to be cool uses Keynote or Powerpoint).
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	264	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	265
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	266	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	267	Although used widely, LaTeX seems nowadays a bit dated for producing
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	268	slides. Unlike documents, which are typically “static” and published in a book or journal,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	269	slides often contain changing contents that might first only be partially visible and
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	270	only later be revealed as the “story” of a talk or lecture demands.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	271	Also slides often contain animated algorithms where each state in the
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	272	calculation is best explained by highlighting the changing data.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	273	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	274
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	275	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	276	It seems HTML and JavaScript are much better suited for generating
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	277	such animated slides. This <A HREF="http://www.impressivewebs.com/html-slidedeck-toolkits/">page</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	278	links to 22 slide-generating programs using this combination of technologies.
316 116648aeeac8 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 315 diff changeset	279	However, the problem with all of these project is that they depend heavily on the users being
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	280	able to write JavaScript, CCS or HTML...not something one would like to depend on given that
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	281	“normal” users likely only have a LaTeX background. The aim of this project is to invent a
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	282	very simple language that is inspired by LaTeX and then generate from code written in this language
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	283	slides that can be displayed in a web-browser.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	284	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	285
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	286	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	287	This sounds complicated, but there is already some help available:
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	288	<A HREF="http://www.mathjax.org">Mathjax</A> is a JavaScript library that can
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	289	be used to display mathematical text, for example
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	290
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	291	<blockquote>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	292	<p>When \(a \ne 0\), there are two solutions to \(ax^2 + bx + c = 0\) and they are
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	293	\(x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a}\).</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	294	</blockquote>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	295
317 532effd5eff9 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 316 diff changeset	296	by writing code in the familiar LaTeX-way. This can be reused.
532effd5eff9 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 316 diff changeset	297	Another such library is <A HREF="http://khan.github.io/KaTeX/">KaTeX</A>.
532effd5eff9 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 316 diff changeset	298	There are also plenty of JavaScript
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	299	libraries for graphical animations (for example
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	300	<A HREF="http://raphaeljs.com">Raphael</A>,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	301	<A HREF="http://svgjs.com">SVG.JS</A>,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	302	<A HREF="http://bonsaijs.org">Bonsaijs</A>,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	303	<A HREF="http://jsxgraph.uni-bayreuth.de/wp/">JSXGraph</A>). The inspiration for how the user should be able to write
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	304	slides could come from the LaTeX packages <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_(LaTeX)">Beamer</A>
359 09effe02de6b updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 358 diff changeset	305	and <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGF/TikZ">PGF/TikZ</A>. A slide-making project from which
09effe02de6b updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 358 diff changeset	306	inspiration can be drawn is <A HREF="http://maciejczyzewski.me/hyhyhy/">hyhyhy</A>.
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	307	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	308
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	309	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	310	<B>Skills:</B>
335 7338cef94b2b updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 334 diff changeset	311	This is a project that requires good knowledge of JavaScript. You need to be able to
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	312	parse a language and translate it to a suitable part of JavaScript using
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	313	appropriate libraries. Tutorials for JavaScript are <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">here</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	314	A parser generator for JavaScript is <A HREF="http://pegjs.majda.cz">here</A>. There are probably also
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	315	others. If you want to avoid JavaScript there are a number of alternatives: for example the
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	316	<A HREF="http://elm-lang.org">Elm</A>
335 7338cef94b2b updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 334 diff changeset	317	language has been especially designed for implementing with ease interactive animations, which would be
316 116648aeeac8 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 315 diff changeset	318	very convenient for this project.
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	319	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	320
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	321	<li> <H4>[CU4] An Online Student Voting System</H4>
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	322
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	323	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	324	<B>Description:</B>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	325	One of the more annoying aspects of giving a lecture is to ask a question
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	326	to the students and no matter how easy the question is to not
316 116648aeeac8 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 315 diff changeset	327	receive any answer. The online course system
116648aeeac8 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 315 diff changeset	328	<A HREF="http://www.udacity.com">Udacity</A>, in contrast, made an art out of
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	329	asking questions during lectures (see for example the
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	330	<A HREF="http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr2012">Web Application Engineering</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	331	course CS253).
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	332	The lecturer there gives multiple-choice questions as part of the lecture and the students need to
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	333	click on the appropriate answer. This works very well in the online world.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	334	For “real-world” lectures, the department has some
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	335	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response">clickers</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	336	(these are little devices which form a part of an audience response systems). However,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	337	they are a logistic nightmare for the lecturer: they need to be distributed
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	338	during the lecture and collected at the end. Nowadays, where students
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	339	come with their own laptop or smartphone to lectures, this can
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	340	be improved.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	341	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	342
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	343	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	344	The task of this project is to implement an online student
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	345	polling system. The lecturer should be able to prepare
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	346	questions beforehand (encoded as some web-form) and be able to
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	347	show them during the lecture. The students
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	348	can give their answers by clicking on the corresponding webpage.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	349	The lecturer can then collect the responses online and evaluate them
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	350	immediately. Such a system is sometimes called
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	351	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response#Smartphone_.2F_HTTP_voting">HTML voting</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	352	There are a number of commercial
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	353	solutions for this problem, but they are not easy to use (in addition
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	354	to being ridiculously expensive). A good student can easily improve upon
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	355	what they provide.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	356	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	357
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	358	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	359	The problem of student polling is not as hard as
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	360	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting">electronic voting</A>,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	361	which essentially is still an unsolved problem in Computer Science. The
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	362	students only need to be prevented from answering question more than once thus skewing
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	363	any statistics. Unlike electronic voting, no audit trail needs to be kept
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	364	for student polling. Restricting the number of answers can probably be solved
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	365	by setting appropriate cookies on the students
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	366	computers or smart phones.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	367	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	368
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	369	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	370	<B>Literature:</B>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	371	The project requires fluency in a web-programming language (for example
316 116648aeeac8 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 315 diff changeset	372	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript">JavaScript</A>,
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	373	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)">Go</A>,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	374	<A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>). However JavaScript with
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	375	the <A HREF="http://nodejs.org">Node.js</A> extension seems to be best suited for the job.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	376	<A HREF="http://www.nodebeginner.org">Here</A> is a tutorial on Node.js for beginners.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	377	For web-programming the
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	378	<A HREF="http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr2012">Web Application Engineering</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	379	course at <A HREF="http://www.udacity.com">Udacity</A> is a good starting point
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	380	to be aware of the issues involved. This course uses <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	381	To evaluate the answers from the students, Google's
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	382	<A HREF="https://developers.google.com/chart/image/docs/making_charts">Chart Tools</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	383	might be useful, which is also described in this
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	384	<A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZtgT4jgnE8">youtube</A> video.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	385	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	386
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	387	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	388	<B>Skills:</B>
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	389	In order to provide convenience for the lecturer, this project needs very good web-programming skills. A
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	390	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)">hacker mentality</A>
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	391	(see above) is probably also very beneficial: web-programming is an area that only emerged recently and
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	392	many tools still lack maturity. You probably have to experiment a lot with several different
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	393	languages and tools.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	394	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	395
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	396	<li> <H4>[CU5] Raspberry Pi's and Arduinos</H4>
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	397
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	398	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	399	<B>Description:</B>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	400	This project is for true hackers! <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi">Raspberry Pi's</A>
344 010478bfef57 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 343 diff changeset	401	are small Linux computers the size of a credit-card and only cost £26 (see picture on the left below). They were introduced
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	402	in 2012 and people went crazy...well some of them. There is a
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	403	<A HREF="https://plus.google.com/communities/113390432655174294208?hl=en">Google+</A> community about Raspberry Pi's that has more
336 4440b0b0e5cd updatde Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 335 diff changeset	404	than 177k of followers. It is hard to keep up with what people do with these small computers. The possibilities
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	405	seem to be limitless. The main resource for Raspberry Pi's is <A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org">here</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	406	There are <A HREF="http://www.themagpi.com">magazines</A> dedicated to them and tons of
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	407	<A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=39">books</A> (not to mention
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	408	floods of <A HREF="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=raspberry+pi">online</A> material).
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	409	Google just released a
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	410	<A HREF="http://googlecreativelab.github.io/coder/">framework</A>
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	411	for web-programming on Raspberry Pi's truning them into webservers.
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	412	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	413
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	414	<p>
329 65516e3fde1d updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 328 diff changeset	415	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino">Arduinos</A> are slightly older (from 2005) but still very cool (see picture on the right below). They
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	416	are small single-board micro-controllers that can talk to various external gadgets (sensors, motors, etc). Since Arduinos
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	417	are open-software and open-hardware there are many clones and add-on boards. Like for the Raspberry Pi, there
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	418	is a lot of material <A HREF="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=arduino">available</A> about Arduinos.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	419	The main reference is <A HREF="http://www.arduino.cc">here</A>. Like the Raspberry Pi's, the good thing about
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	420	Arduinos is that they can be powered with simple AA-batteries.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	421	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	422
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	423	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	424	I have two such Raspberry Pi's including wifi-connectors and two <A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/camera">cameras<A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	425	I also have two <A HREF="http://www.freaklabs.org/index.php/Blog/Store/Introducing-the-Freakduino-Chibi-An-Arduino-based-Board-For-Wireless-Sensor-Networking.html">Freakduino Boards</A> that are Arduinos extended with wireless communication. I can lend them to responsible
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	426	students for one or two projects. However, the aim is to first come up with an idea for a project. Popular projects are
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	427	automated temperature sensors, network servers, robots, web-cams (<A HREF="http://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/electronics/shard-rain-cam/">here</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	428	is a <A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3547">web-cam</A> directed at the Shard that can
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	429	<A HREF="http://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/software/shard-rain-cam-quantifying-cloudy/">tell</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	430	you whether it is raining or cloudy). There are plenty more ideas listed
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	431	<A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=15">here</A> for Raspberry Pi's and
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	432	<A HREF="http://playground.arduino.cc/projects/ideas">here</A> for Arduinos.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	433	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	434
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	435	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	436	There are essentially two kinds of projects: One is purely software-based. Software projects for Raspberry Pi's are often
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	437	written in <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>, but since these are Linux-capable computers any other
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	438	language would do as well. You can also write your own operating system as done
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	439	<A HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/projects/raspberrypi/tutorials/os/">here</A>. For example the students
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	440	<A HREF="http://www.recantha.co.uk/blog/?p=4918">here</A> developed their own bare-metal OS and then implemented
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	441	a chess-program on top of it (have a look at their very impressive
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	442	<A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-03bouPsfEQ&feature=player_embedded">youtube</A> video).
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	443	The other kind of project is a combination of hardware and software; usually attaching some sensors
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	444	or motors to the Raspberry Pi or Arduino. This might require some soldering or what is called
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	445	a <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadboard">bread-board</A>. But be careful before choosing a project
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	446	involving new hardware: these devices
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	447	can be destroyed (if “Vin connected to GND” or “drawing more than 30mA from a GPIO”
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	448	does not make sense to you, you should probably stay away from such a project).
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	449	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	450
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	451	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	452	<center>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	453	<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	454	"src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/RaspberryPi.jpg" width="313" height="209">
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	455
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	456	<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	457	"src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Arduino_Uno_-_R3.jpg" width="240" height="209">
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	458	</center>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	459	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	460
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	461	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	462	<B>Skills:</B>
345 6d175098b273 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 344 diff changeset	463	Well, you must be a hacker; happy to make things. Your desk might look like the photo below on the left.
336 4440b0b0e5cd updatde Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 335 diff changeset	464	The photo below on the righ shows an earlier student project which connects wirelessly a wearable Arduino (packaged
4440b0b0e5cd updatde Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 335 diff changeset	465	in a "self-3d-printed" watch) to a Raspberry Pi seen in the background. The Arduino in the forground takes meaurements of
330 8083b2b301e1 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 329 diff changeset	466	heart rate and body temperature; the Raspberry Pi collects this data and makes it accessible via a simple
321 49a4d756f4d5 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 320 diff changeset	467	web-service.
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	468	<center>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	469	<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	470	"src="http://www.inf.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/rpi-photo.jpg" width="209" height="313">
318 d4ab340319f3 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 317 diff changeset	471
d4ab340319f3 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 317 diff changeset	472	<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;
320 e997f259914d updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 319 diff changeset	473	"src="http://www.inf.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/rpi-watch.jpg" width="450" height="254">
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	474	</center>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	475	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	476
342 699d7815bf17 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 341 diff changeset	477	<li> <H4>[CU6] An Infrastructure for Displaying and Animating Code in a Web-Browser</H4>
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	478
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	479	<p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	480	<B>Description:</B>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	481	The project aim is to implement an infrastructure for displaying and
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	482	animating code in a web-browser. The infrastructure should be agnostic
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	483	with respect to the programming language, but should be configurable.
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	484	I envisage something smaller than the projects
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	485	<A HREF="http://www.pythontutor.com">here</A> (for Python),
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	486	<A HREF="http://ideone.com">here</A> (for Java),
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	487	<A HREF="http://codepad.org">here</A> (for multiple languages),
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	488	<A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_intro">here</A> (for HTML)
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	489	<A HREF="http://repl.it/languages/JavaScript">here</A> (for JavaScript),
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	490	and <A HREF="http://www.scala-tour.com/#/welcome">here</A> (for Scala).
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	491	</p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	492
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	493	<p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	494	The tasks in this project are being able (1) to lex and parse languages and (2) to write an interpreter.
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	495	The goal is to implement this as much as possible in a language-agnostic fashion.
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	496	</p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	497
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	498	<p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	499	<B>Skills:</B>
337 79055e98f166 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 336 diff changeset	500	Good skills in lexing and language parsing, as well as being fluent with web programming (for
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	501	example JavaScript).
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	502	</p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	503
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	504
342 699d7815bf17 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 341 diff changeset	505	<li> <H4>[CU7] Implementation of a Distributed Clock-Synchronisation Algorithm developed at NASA</H4>
311 841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	506
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	507	<p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	508	<B>Description:</B>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	509	There are many algorithms for synchronising clocks. This
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	510	<A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	511	describes a new algorithm for clocks that communicate by exchanging
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	512	messages and thereby reach a state in which (within some bound) all clocks are synchronised.
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	513	A slightly longer and more detailed paper about the algorithm is
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	514	<A HREF="http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20110020812">here</A>.
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	515	The point of this project is to implement this algorithm and simulate networks of clocks.
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	516	</p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	517
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	518	<p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	519	<B>Literature:</B>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	520	There is a wide range of literature on clock synchronisation algorithms.
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	521	Some pointers are given in this
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	522	<A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>,
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	523	which describes the algorithm to be implemented in this project. Pointers
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	524	are given also <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_synchronization">here</A>.
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	525	</p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	526
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	527	<p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	528	<B>Skills:</B>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	529	In order to implement a simulation of a network of clocks, you need to tackle
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	530	concurrency. You can do this for example in the programming language
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	531	<A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A> with the help of the
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	532	<A HREF="http://akka.io">Akka</a> library. This library enables you to send messages
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	533	between different <I>actors</I>. <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/node/242">Here</A>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	534	are some examples that explain how to implement exchanging messages between actors.
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	535	</p>
841fdad7fcdc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 300 diff changeset	536
342 699d7815bf17 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 341 diff changeset	537	<li> <H4>[CU8] Proving the Correctness of Programs</H4>
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	538
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	539	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	540	I am one of the main developers of the interactive theorem prover
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	541	<A HREF="http://isabelle.in.tum.de">Isabelle</A>. This theorem prover
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	542	has been used to establish the correctness of some quite large
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	543	programs (for example an <A HREF="http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/">operating system</A>).
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	544	Together with colleagues from Nanjing, I used this theorem prover to establish the correctness of a
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	545	scheduling algorithm, called
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	546	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_inheritance">Priority Inheritance</A>,
337 79055e98f166 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 336 diff changeset	547	for real-time operating systems. This scheduling algorithm is part of the operating
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	548	system that drives, for example, the
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	549	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover">Mars rovers</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	550	Actually, the very first Mars rover mission in 1997 did not have this
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	551	algorithm switched on and it almost caused a catastrophic mission failure (see
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	552	this youtube video <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyx7kARrGeM">here</A>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	553	for an explanation what happened).
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	554	We were able to prove the correctness of this algorithm, but were also able to
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	555	establish the correctness of some optimisations in this
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	556	<A HREF="http://www.inf.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/Publications/pip.pdf">paper</A>.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	557	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	558
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	559	<p>On a much smaller scale, there are a few small programs and underlying algorithms where it
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	560	is not really understood whether they always compute a correct result (for example the
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	561	regular expression matcher by Sulzmann and Lu in project [CU1]). The aim of this
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	562	project is to completely specify an algorithm in Isabelle and then prove it correct (that is,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	563	it always computes the correct result).
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	564	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	565
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	566	<p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	567	<B>Skills:</B>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	568	This project is for a very good student with a knack for theoretical things and formal reasoning.
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	569	</p>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	570
348 b13048734c76 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 345 diff changeset	571	<li> <H4>[CU9] Anything Security Related that is Interesting</H4>
b13048734c76 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 345 diff changeset	572
b13048734c76 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 345 diff changeset	573	<p>
b13048734c76 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 345 diff changeset	574	If you have your own project that is related to security (must be
b13048734c76 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 345 diff changeset	575	something interesting), please propose it. We can then have a look
b13048734c76 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 345 diff changeset	576	whether it would be suitable for a project.
b13048734c76 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 345 diff changeset	577	</p>
b13048734c76 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 345 diff changeset	578
355 50c34fa6a577 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 354 diff changeset	579	<li> <H4>[CU10] A Graphics Framework for JavaScript</H4>
50c34fa6a577 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 354 diff changeset	580
50c34fa6a577 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 354 diff changeset	581	<li> <H4>[CU11] Anything Interesting in the Areas</H4>
350 23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	582
23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	583	<p>
23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	584	<ul>
358 26fc8f69ce01 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 357 diff changeset	585	<li><A HREF="http://elm-lang.org">Elm</A> (a reactive functional language for animating webpages; have a look at the cool examples, or <A HREF="http://pragmaticstudio.com/blog/2014/12/19/getting-started-with-elm">here</A> for an introduction)
350 23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	586	<li><A HREF="http://www.smlserver.org/smltojs/">SMLtoJS</A> (a ML compiler to JavaScript; or anything else related to
351 9e6aa4118884 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 350 diff changeset	587	sane languages that compile to JavaScript)
350 23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	588	<li>Any statistical data related to Bitcoins (in the spirit of this
23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	589	<A HREF="http://people.csail.mit.edu/spillai/data/papers/ bitcoin-transaction-graph-analysis.pdf">paper</A> or
23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	590	this <A HREF="https://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf">one</A>; this will probably require some extensive C knowledge or any
23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	591	other heavy-duty programming language)
351 9e6aa4118884 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 350 diff changeset	592	<li>Anything related to programming languages and formal methods (like
9e6aa4118884 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 350 diff changeset	593	<A HREF="http://matt.might.net/articles/intro-static-analysis/">static program analysis</A>)
354 1d6274c2a30d updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 353 diff changeset	594	<li>Anything related to low-cost, hands-on hardware like Raspberry Pi, Arduino,
1d6274c2a30d updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 353 diff changeset	595	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubieboard">Cubieboard</A>
357 ad6dccc4fb4a updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 355 diff changeset	596	<li>Anything related to microkernel operating systems, like
ad6dccc4fb4a updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 355 diff changeset	597	<A HREF="http://www.xenproject.org">Xen</A> or
ad6dccc4fb4a updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 355 diff changeset	598	<A HREF="http://www.openmirage.org">Mirage OS</A>
360 ee9b4674113a updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 359 diff changeset	599	<li>Any kind of applied hacking, for example the Arduino-based keylogger described
ee9b4674113a updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 359 diff changeset	600	<A HREF="http://samy.pl/keysweeper/">here</A>
350 23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	601	</ul>
23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	602	</p>
23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	603
23543b87a9bc updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 348 diff changeset	604
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	605	<li> <H4>Earlier Projects</H4>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	606
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	607	I am also open to project suggestions from you. You might find some inspiration from my earlier projects:
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	608	<A HREF="http://www.inf.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/bsc-projects-12.html">BSc 2012/13</A>,
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	609	<A HREF="http://www.inf.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/msc-projects-12.html">MSc 2012/13</A>,
333 846966afdad1 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 331 diff changeset	610	<A HREF="http://www.inf.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/bsc-projects-13.html">BSc 2013/14</A>
846966afdad1 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 331 diff changeset	611	<A HREF="http://www.inf.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/msc-projects-13.html">MSc 2013/14</A>
354 1d6274c2a30d updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 353 diff changeset	612
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	613	</ul>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	614	</TD>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	615	</TR>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	616	</TABLE>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	617
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	618	<P>
360 ee9b4674113a updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 359 diff changeset	619	<!-- hhmts start --> Last modified: Wed Jan 14 01:25:12 GMT 2015 <!-- hhmts end -->
297 6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	620	<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer">[Validate this page.]</a>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	621	</BODY>
6ddd1deb3566 added bsc-prjs Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	622	</HTML>

author	Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk>
	Mon, 30 Nov 2015 23:56:51 +0000
changeset 387	37afaead31dd
parent 360	ee9b4674113a
child 465	4dac76eb27d9
permissions	-rw-r--r--