public_html: msc-projects-13.html@a2a2afc15796 (annotated)

253 f4b73afc6007 added 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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f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	4	<TITLE>2013/14 Msc Projects</TITLE>
465 4dac76eb27d9 updated Christian Urban <urbanc@in.tum.de> parents: 285 diff changeset	5	<BASE HREF="http://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/">
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f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	18
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	19
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f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	27
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f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	32
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	33	<H2>2013/14 MSc Projects</H2>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	34	<H4>Supervisor: Christian Urban</H4>
f4b73afc6007 added 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>
f4b73afc6007 added 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
f4b73afc6007 added 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.
f4b73afc6007 added 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>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	39
f4b73afc6007 added 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
f4b73afc6007 added 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> …
f4b73afc6007 added 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
f4b73afc6007 added 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
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	44	necessary.” I am always happy to supervise like-minded students.</H4>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	45
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	46	<ul class="striped">
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	47	<li> <H4>[CU1] Regular Expression Matching and Partial Derivatives</H4>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	48
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	49	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	50	<B>Description:</b>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	51	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_expression">Regular expressions</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	52	are extremely useful for many text-processing tasks such as finding patterns in texts,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	53	lexing programs, syntax highlighting and so on. Given that regular expressions were
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	54	introduced in 1950 by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Cole_Kleene">Stephen Kleene</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	55	you might think regular expressions have since been studied and implemented to death. But you would definitely be
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	56	mistaken: in fact they are still an active research area. For example
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	57	<A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/ppdp12-part-deriv-sub-match.pdf">this paper</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	58	about regular expression matching and partial derivatives was presented last summer at the international
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	59	PPDP'12 conference. They even work on a followup paper that has not yet been presented at any
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	60	conference. The task in this project is to implement their results.</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	61
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	62	<p>The background for this project is that some regular expressions are
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	63	“<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS#Examples">evil</A>”
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	64	and can “stab you in the back” according to
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	65	this <A HREF="http://tech.blog.cueup.com/regular-expressions-will-stab-you-in-the-back">blog post</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	66	For example, if you use in <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A> or
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	67	in <A HREF="http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/">Ruby</A> (probably also other mainstream programming languages) the
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	68	innocently looking regular expression <code>a?{28}a{28}</code> and match it, say, against the string
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	69	<code>aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa</code> (that is 28 <code>a</code>s), you will soon notice that your CPU usage goes to 100%. In fact,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	70	Python and Ruby need approximately 30 seconds of hard work for matching this string. You can try it for yourself:
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	71	<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
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	72	<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>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	73	(Ruby version). You can imagine an attacker
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	74	mounting a nice <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack">DoS attack</A> against
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	75	your program if it contains such an “evil” regular expression. Actually
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	76	<A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A> (and also Java) are almost immune from such
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	77	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
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	78	the regular expression and string further to, say, 4,600 <code>a</code>s, then you get a <code>StackOverflowError</code>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	79	potentially crashing your program.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	80	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	81
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	82	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	83	On a rainy afternoon, I implemented
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	84	<A HREF="http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/cgi-bin/repos.cgi/afl-material/raw-file/tip/progs/re3.scala">this</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	85	regular expression matcher in Scala. It is not as fast as the official one in Scala, but
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	86	it can match up to 11,000 <code>a</code>s in less than 5 seconds without raising any exception
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	87	(remember Python and Ruby both need nearly 30 seconds to process 28(!) <code>a</code>s, and Scala's
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	88	official matcher maxes out at 4,600 <code>a</code>s). My matcher is approximately
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	89	85 lines of code and based on the concept of
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	90	<A HREF="http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2293">derivatives of regular expressions</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	91	These derivatives were introduced in 1964 by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janusz_Brzozowski_(computer_scientist)">
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	92	Janusz Brzozowski</A>, but according to this
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	93	<A HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~so294/documents/jfp09.pdf">paper</A> had been lost in the “sands of time”.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	94	The advantage of derivatives is that they side-step completely the usual
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	95	<A HREF="http://hackingoff.com/compilers/regular-expression-to-nfa-dfa">translations</A> of regular expressions
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	96	into NFAs or DFAs, which can introduce the exponential behaviour exhibited by the regular
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	97	expression matchers in Python and Ruby.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	98	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	99
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	100	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	101	Now the authors from the
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	102	<A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/ppdp12-part-deriv-sub-match.pdf">PPDP'12-paper</A> mentioned
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	103	above claim they are even faster than me and can deal with even more features of regular expressions
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	104	(for example subexpression matching, which my rainy-afternoon matcher cannot). I am sure they thought
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	105	about the problem much longer than a single afternoon. The task
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	106	in this project is to find out how good they actually are by implementing the results from their paper.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	107	Their approach is based on the concept of partial derivatives introduced in 1994 by
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	108	<A HREF="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.56.2509&rep=rep1&type=pdf">Valentin Antimirov</A>.
465 4dac76eb27d9 updated Christian Urban <urbanc@in.tum.de> parents: 285 diff changeset	109	I used them once myself in a <A HREF="http://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/Publications/rexp.pdf">paper</A>
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	110	in order to prove the <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myhill–Nerode_theorem">Myhill-Nerode theorem</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	111	So I know they are worth their money. Still, it would be interesting to actually compare their results
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	112	with my simple rainy-afternoon matcher and potentially “blow away” the regular expression matchers
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	113	in Python and Ruby (and possibly in Scala too).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	114	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	115
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	116	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	117	<B>Literature:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	118	The place to start with this project is obviously this
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	119	<A HREF="http://www.home.hs-karlsruhe.de/~suma0002/publications/ppdp12-part-deriv-sub-match.pdf">paper</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	120	Traditional methods for regular expression matching are explained
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	121	in the Wikipedia articles
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	122	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DFA_minimization">here</A> and
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	123	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerset_construction">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	124	The authoritative <A HREF="http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/ialc.html">book</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	125	on automata and regular expressions is by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullmann (available in the library).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	126	There is also an online course about this topic by Ullman at
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	127	<A HREF="https://www.coursera.org/course/automata">Coursera</A>, though IMHO not
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	128	done with love.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	129	Finally, there are millions of other pointers about regular expression
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	130	matching on the Web. I found the chapter on Lexing in this
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	131	<A HREF="http://www.diku.dk/~torbenm/Basics/">online book</A> very helpful.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	132	Test cases for “<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS#Examples">evil</A>”
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	133	regular expressions can be obtained from <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReDoS#Examples">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	134	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	135
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	136	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	137	<B>Skills:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	138	This is a project for a student with an interest in theory and some
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	139	reasonable programming skills. The project can be easily implemented
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	140	in functional languages like
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	141	<A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	142	F#,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	143	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_ML">ML</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	144	<A HREF="http://haskell.org/haskellwiki/Haskell">Haskell</A>, etc. Python and other non-functional languages
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	145	can be also used, but seem much less convenient.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	146	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	147
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	148	<li> <H4>[CU2] A Compiler for a Simple Programming Language</H4>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	149
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	150	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	151	<b>Description:</b>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	152	Compilers translate high-level programs that humans can read and write into
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	153	efficient machine code that can be run on a CPU or virtual machine.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	154	A compiler for a simple functional language generating X86 code is described
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	155	<A HREF="https://github.com/chameco/Shade">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	156	I recently implemented a very simple compiler for an even simpler functional
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	157	programming language following this
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	158	<A HREF="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/papers/tal-toplas.pdf">paper</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	159	(also described <A HREF="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/papers/tal-tr.pdf">here</A>).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	160	My code, written in <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>, of this compiler is
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	161	<A HREF="http://www.dcs.kcl.ac.uk/staff/urbanc/compiler.scala">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	162	The compiler can deal with simple programs involving natural numbers, such
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	163	as Fibonacci numbers or factorial (but it can be easily extended - that is not the point).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	164	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	165
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	166	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	167	While the hard work has been done (understanding the two papers above),
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	168	my compiler only produces some idealised machine code. For example I
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	169	assume there are infinitely many registers. The goal of this
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	170	project is to generate machine code that is more realistic and can
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	171	run on a CPU, like X86, or run on a virtual machine, say the JVM.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	172	This gives probably a speedup of thousand times in comparison to
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	173	my naive machine code and virtual machine. The project
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	174	requires to dig into the literature about real CPUs and generating
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	175	real machine code.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	176	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	177
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	178	<p>
285 91b236ff06dd typos Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 278 diff changeset	179	An alternative is to not generate machine code, but build a compiler that compiles to
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	180	<A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">JavaScript</A>. This is the language that is supported by most
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	181	browsers and therefore is a favourite
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	182	vehicle for Web-programming. Some call it <B>the</B> scripting language of the Web.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	183	Unfortunately, JavaScript is probably one of the worst
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	184	languages to program in (being designed and released in a hurry). <B>But</B> it can be used as a convenient target
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	185	for translating programs from other languages. In particular there are two
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	186	very optimised subsets of JavaScript that can be used for this purpose:
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	187	one is <A HREF="http://asmjs.org">asm.js</A> and the other is
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	188	<A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki">emscripten</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	189	There is a <A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki/Tutorial">tutorial</A> for emscripten
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	190	and an impressive <A HREF="http://www.unrealengine.com/html5/">demo</A> which runs the
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	191	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine">Unreal Engine 3</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	192	in a browser with spectacular speed. This was achieved by compiling the
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	193	C-code of the Unreal Engine to the LLVM intermediate language and then translating the LLVM
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	194	code to JavaScript.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	195	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	196
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	197	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	198	<B>Literature:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	199	There is a lot of literature about compilers
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	200	(for example <A HREF="http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/papers/cwc.html">this book</A> -
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	201	I can lend you my copy for the duration of the project, or this
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	202	<A HREF="http://www.diku.dk/~torbenm/Basics/">online book</A>). A very good overview article
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	203	about implementing compilers by
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	204	<A HREF="http://tratt.net/laurie/">Laurie Tratt</A> is
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	205	<A HREF="http://tratt.net/laurie/tech_articles/articles/how_difficult_is_it_to_write_a_compiler">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	206	An online book about the Art of Assembly Language is
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	207	<A HREF="http://flint.cs.yale.edu/cs422/doc/art-of-asm/pdf/">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	208	An introduction into x86 machine code is <A HREF="http://ianseyler.github.com/easy_x86-64/">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	209	Intel's official manual for the x86 instruction is
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	210	<A HREF="http://download.intel.com/design/intarch/manuals/24319101.pdf">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	211	A simple assembler for the JVM is described <A HREF="http://jasmin.sourceforge.net">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	212	An interesting twist of this project is to not generate code for a CPU, but
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	213	for the intermediate language of the <A HREF="http://llvm.org">LLVM</A> compiler
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	214	(also described <A HREF="https://wiki.aalto.fi/display/t1065450/LLVM+IR">here</A> and
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	215	<A HREF="http://llvm.org/docs/LangRef.html">here</A>). If you want to see
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	216	what machine code looks like you can compile your C-program using gcc -S.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	217	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	218	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	219	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.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	220	<A HREF="http://jsbooks.revolunet.com">Here</A> is a list of free books on JavaScript.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	221	A project from which you can draw inspiration is this
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	222	<A HREF="http://jlongster.com/2012/01/04/outlet-my-lisp-to-javascript-experiment.html">List-to-JavaScript</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	223	translator. <A HREF="https://bitbucket.org/ktg/parenjs/overview">Here</A> is another such project.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	224	And <A HREF="https://github.com/viclib/liscript">another</A> in less than 100 lines of code.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	225	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoffeeScript">Coffeescript</A> is a similar project
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	226	except that it is already quite <A HREF="http://coffeescript.org">mature</A>. And finally not to
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	227	forget <A HREF="http://www.typescriptlang.org">TypeScript</A> developed by Microsoft. The main
278 7e056bb8c9ab updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 277 diff changeset	228	difference between these projects and this one is that they translate into relatively high-level
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	229	JavaScript code; none of them use the much lower levels <A HREF="http://asmjs.org">asm.js</A> and
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	230	<A HREF="https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/wiki">emscripten</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	231	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	232
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	233	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	234	<B>Skills:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	235	This is a project for a student with a deep interest in programming languages and
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	236	compilers. Since my compiler is implemented in <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	237	it would make sense to continue this project in this language. I can be
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	238	of help with questions and books about <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	239	But if Scala is a problem, my code can also be translated quickly into any other functional
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	240	language.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	241	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	242
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	243	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	244	<B>PS:</B> Compiler projects like this one consistently received high marks in the past.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	245	I suprvised four so far and none of them received a mark below 70% - one even was awarded a prize.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	246	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	247
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	248	<li> <H4>[CU3] Slide-Making in the Web-Age</H4>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	249
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	250	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	251	The standard technology for writing scientific papers in Computer Science is to use
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	252	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX">LaTeX</A>, a document preparation
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	253	system originally implemented by <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth">Donald Knuth</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	254	and <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Lamport">Leslie Lamport</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	255	LaTeX produces very pleasantly looking documents, can deal nicely with mathematical
258 cb7f2f627278 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 257 diff changeset	256	formulas and is very flexible. If you are interested, <A HREF="http://openwetware.org/wiki/Word_vs._LaTeX">here</A>
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	257	is a side-by-side comparison between Word and LaTeX (which LaTeX “wins” with 18 out of 21 points).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	258	Computer scientists not only use LaTeX for documents,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	259	but also for slides (really, nobody who wants to be cool uses Keynote or Powerpoint).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	260	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	261
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	262	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	263	Although used widely, LaTeX seems nowadays a bit dated for producing
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	264	slides. Unlike documents, which are typically “static” and published in a book or journal,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	265	slides often contain changing contents that might first only be partially visible and
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	266	only later be revealed as the “story” of a talk or lecture demands.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	267	Also slides often contain animated algorithms where each state in the
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	268	calculation is best explained by highlighting the changing data.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	269	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	270
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	271	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	272	It seems HTML and JavaScript are much better suited for generating
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	273	such animated slides. This <A HREF="http://www.impressivewebs.com/html-slidedeck-toolkits/">page</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	274	links to 22 slide-generating programs using this combination of technologies.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	275	<A HREF="http://www.impressivewebs.com/html-slidedeck-toolkits/">Here</A> are even more such
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	276	projects. However, the problem with all of these project is that they depend heavily on the users being
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	277	able to write JavaScript, CCS or HTML...not something one would like to depend on given that
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	278	“normal” users likely only have a LaTeX background. The aim of this project is to invent a
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	279	very simple language that is inspired by LaTeX and then generate from code written in this language
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	280	slides that can be displayed in a web-browser.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	281	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	282
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	283	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	284	This sounds complicated, but there is already some help available:
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	285	<A HREF="http://www.mathjax.org">Mathjax</A> is a JavaScript library that can
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	286	be used to display mathematical text, for example
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	287
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	288	<blockquote>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	289	<p>When \(a \ne 0\), there are two solutions to \(ax^2 + bx + c = 0\) and they are
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	290	\(x = {-b \pm \sqrt{b^2-4ac} \over 2a}\).</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	291	</blockquote>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	292
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	293	by writing code in the familiar LaTeX-way. This can be reused. There are also plenty of JavaScript
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	294	libraries for graphical animations (for example
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	295	<A HREF="http://raphaeljs.com">Raphael</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	296	<A HREF="http://svgjs.com">SVG.JS</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	297	<A HREF="http://bonsaijs.org">Bonsaijs</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	298	<A HREF="http://jsxgraph.uni-bayreuth.de/wp/">JSXGraph</A>). The inspiration for how the user should be able to write
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	299	slides could come from the LaTeX packages <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamer_(LaTeX)">Beamer</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	300	and <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGF/TikZ">PGF/TikZ</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	301	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	302
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	303	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	304	<B>Skills:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	305	This is a project requires good knowledge of JavaScript. You need to be able to
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	306	parse a language and translate it to a suitable part of JavaScript using
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	307	appropriate libraries. Tutorials for JavaScript are <A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/js/">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	308	A parser generator for JavaScript is <A HREF="http://pegjs.majda.cz">here</A>. There are probably also
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	309	others.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	310	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	311
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	312	<li> <H4>[CU4] An Online Student Voting System</H4>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	313
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	314	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	315	<B>Description:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	316	One of the more annoying aspects of giving a lecture is to ask a question
277 96f9be2b8188 updated marks Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 258 diff changeset	317	to the students and no matter how easy the question is to not
96f9be2b8188 updated marks Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 258 diff changeset	318	receive any answer. Recently, the online course system
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	319	<A HREF="http://www.udacity.com">Udacity</A> made an art out of
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	320	asking questions during lectures (see for example the
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	321	<A HREF="http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr2012">Web Application Engineering</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	322	course CS253).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	323	The lecturer there gives multiple-choice questions as part of the lecture and the students need to
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	324	click on the appropriate answer. This works very well in the online world.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	325	For “real-world” lectures, the department has some
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	326	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response">clickers</A>
277 96f9be2b8188 updated marks Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 258 diff changeset	327	(these are little devices which for a part of an audience response systems). However,
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	328	they are a logistic nightmare for the lecturer: they need to be distributed
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	329	during the lecture and collected at the end. Nowadays, where students
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	330	come with their own laptop or smartphone to lectures, this can
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	331	be improved.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	332	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	333
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	334	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	335	The task of this project is to implement an online student
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	336	polling system. The lecturer should be able to prepare
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	337	questions beforehand (encoded as some web-form) and be able to
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	338	show them during the lecture. The students
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	339	can give their answers by clicking on the corresponding webpage.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	340	The lecturer can then collect the responses online and evaluate them
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	341	immediately. Such a system is sometimes called
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	342	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_response#Smartphone_.2F_HTTP_voting">HTML voting</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	343	There are a number of commercial
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	344	solutions for this problem, but they are not easy to use (in addition
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	345	to being ridiculously expensive). A good student can easily improve upon
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	346	what they provide.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	347	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	348
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	349	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	350	The problem of student polling is not as hard as
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	351	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting">electronic voting</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	352	which essentially is still an unsolved problem in Computer Science. The
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	353	students only need to be prevented from answering question more than once thus skewing
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	354	any statistics. Unlike electronic voting, no audit trail needs to be kept
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	355	for student polling. Restricting the number of answers can probably be solved
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	356	by setting appropriate cookies on the students
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	357	computers or smart phones.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	358	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	359
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	360	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	361	<B>Literature:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	362	The project requires fluency in a web-programming language (for example
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	363	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript">Javascript</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	364	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(programming_language)">Go</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	365	<A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A>). However JavaScript with
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	366	the <A HREF="http://nodejs.org">Node.js</A> extension seems to be best suited for the job.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	367	<A HREF="http://www.nodebeginner.org">Here</A> is a tutorial on Node.js for beginners.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	368	For web-programming the
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	369	<A HREF="http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr2012">Web Application Engineering</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	370	course at <A HREF="http://www.udacity.com">Udacity</A> is a good starting point
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	371	to be aware of the issues involved. This course uses <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	372	To evaluate the answers from the students, Google's
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	373	<A HREF="https://developers.google.com/chart/image/docs/making_charts">Chart Tools</A>
285 91b236ff06dd typos Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 278 diff changeset	374	might be useful, which is also described in this
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	375	<A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZtgT4jgnE8">youtube</A> video.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	376	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	377
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	378	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	379	<B>Skills:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	380	In order to provide convenience for the lecturer, this project needs very good web-programming skills. A
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	381	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)">hacker mentality</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	382	(see above) is probably very beneficial: web-programming is an area that only emerged recently and
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	383	many tools still lack maturity. You probably have to experiment a lot with several different
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	384	languages and tools.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	385	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	386
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	387	<li> <H4>[CU5] An Infrastructure for Displaying and Animating Code in a Web-Browser</H4>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	388
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	389	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	390	<B>Description:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	391	The project aim is to implement an infrastructure for displaying and
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	392	animating code in a web-browser. The infrastructure should be agnostic
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	393	with respect to the programming language, but should be configurable.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	394	I envisage something smaller than the projects
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	395	<A HREF="http://www.pythontutor.com">here</A> (for Python),
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	396	<A HREF="http://ideone.com">here</A> (for Java),
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	397	<A HREF="http://codepad.org">here</A> (for multiple languages),
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	398	<A HREF="http://www.w3schools.com/html/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml_intro">here</A> (for HTML)
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	399	<A HREF="http://repl.it/languages/JavaScript">here</A> (for JavaScript),
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	400	and <A HREF="http://www.scala-tour.com/#/welcome">here</A> (for Scala).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	401	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	402
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	403	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	404	The tasks in this project are being able (1) to lex and parse languages and (2) to write an interpreter.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	405	The goal is to implement this as much as possible in a language-agnostic fashion.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	406	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	407
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	408	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	409	<B>Skills:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	410	Good skill in lexing and language parsing, as well as being fluent with web programming (for
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	411	example JavaScript).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	412	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	413
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	414
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	415	<li> <H4>[CU6] Implementation of a Distributed Clock-Synchronisation Algorithm developed at NASA</H4>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	416
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	417	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	418	<B>Description:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	419	There are many algorithms for synchronising clocks. This
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	420	<A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	421	describes a new algorithm for clocks that communicate by exchanging
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	422	messages and thereby reach a state in which (within some bound) all clocks are synchronised.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	423	A slightly longer and more detailed paper about the algorithm is
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	424	<A HREF="http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20110020812">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	425	The point of this project is to implement this algorithm and simulate networks of clocks.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	426	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	427
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	428	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	429	<B>Literature:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	430	There is a wide range of literature on clock synchronisation algorithms.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	431	Some pointers are given in this
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	432	<A HREF="http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20120000054_2011025573.pdf">paper</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	433	which describes the algorithm to be implemented in this project. Pointers
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	434	are given also <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_synchronization">here</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	435	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	436
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	437	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	438	<B>Skills:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	439	In order to implement a simulation of a network of clocks, you need to tackle
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	440	concurrency. You can do this for example in the programming language
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	441	<A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/">Scala</A> with the help of the
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	442	<A HREF="http://akka.io">Akka</a> library. This library enables you to send messages
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	443	between different <I>actors</I>. <A HREF="http://www.scala-lang.org/node/242">Here</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	444	are some examples that explain how to implement exchanging messages between actors.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	445	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	446
257 61c865156f57 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 255 diff changeset	447	<li> <H4>[CU7] Raspberry Pi's and Arduinos</H4>
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	448
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	449	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	450	<B>Description:</B>
257 61c865156f57 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 255 diff changeset	451	This project is for true hackers! <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi">Raspberry Pi's</A>
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	452	are small Linux computers the size of a credit-card and only cost £34 (see picture left below). They were introduced
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	453	in 2012 and people went crazy...well some of them. There is a
257 61c865156f57 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 255 diff changeset	454	<A HREF="https://plus.google.com/communities/113390432655174294208?hl=en">Google+</A> community about Raspberry Pi's that has more
285 91b236ff06dd typos Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 278 diff changeset	455	than 150k of followers. It is hard to keep up with what people do with these small computers. The possibilities
257 61c865156f57 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 255 diff changeset	456	seem to be limitless. The main resource for Raspberry Pi's is <A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org">here</A>.
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	457	There are <A HREF="http://www.themagpi.com">magazines</A> dedicated to them and tons of
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	458	<A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=39">books</A> (not to mention
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	459	floods of <A HREF="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=raspberry+pi">online</A> material).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	460	Google just released a
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	461	<A HREF="http://googlecreativelab.github.io/coder/">framework</A>
257 61c865156f57 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 255 diff changeset	462	for web-programming and for turning Raspberry Pi's into webservers.
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	463	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	464
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	465	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	466	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino">Arduinos</A> are slightly older (from 2005) but still very cool (see picture right below). They
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	467	are small single-board micro-controllers that can talk to various external gadgets (sensors, motors, etc). Since Arduinos
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	468	are open-software and open-hardware there are many clones and add-on boards. Like for the Raspberry Pi, there
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	469	is a lot of material <A HREF="https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=arduino">available</A> about Arduinos.
257 61c865156f57 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 255 diff changeset	470	The main reference is <A HREF="http://www.arduino.cc">here</A>. Like the Raspberry Pi's, the good thing about
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	471	Arduinos is that they can be powered with simple AA-batteries.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	472	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	473
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	474	<p>
257 61c865156f57 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 255 diff changeset	475	I have two such Raspberry Pi's including wifi-connectors and two <A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/camera">cameras<A>.
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	476	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
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	477	students for one or two projects. However, the aim is to first come up with an idea for a project. Popular projects are
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	478	automated temperature sensors, network servers, robots, web-cams (<A HREF="http://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/electronics/shard-rain-cam/">here</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	479	is a <A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/3547">web-cam</A> directed at the Shard that can
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	480	<A HREF="http://www.secretbatcave.co.uk/software/shard-rain-cam-quantifying-cloudy/">tell</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	481	you whether it is raining or cloudy). There are plenty more ideas listed
257 61c865156f57 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 255 diff changeset	482	<A HREF="http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=15">here</A> for Raspberry Pi's and
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	483	<A HREF="http://playground.arduino.cc/projects/ideas">here</A> for Arduinos.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	484	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	485
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	486	<p>
257 61c865156f57 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 255 diff changeset	487	There are essentially two kinds of projects: One is purely software-based. Software projects for Raspberry Pi's are often
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	488	written in <A HREF="http://www.python.org">Python</A>, but since these are Linux-capable computers any other
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	489	language would do as well. You can also write your own operating system as done
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	490	<A HREF="http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/projects/raspberrypi/tutorials/os/">here</A>. For example the students
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	491	<A HREF="http://www.recantha.co.uk/blog/?p=4918">here</A> developed their own bare-metal OS and then implemented
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	492	a chess-program on top of it (have a look at their very impressive
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	493	<A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-03bouPsfEQ&feature=player_embedded">youtube</A> video).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	494	The other kind of project is a combination of hardware and software; usually attaching some sensors
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	495	or motors to the Raspberry Pi or Arduino. This might require some soldering or what is called
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	496	a <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadboard">bread-board</A>. But be careful before choosing a project
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	497	involving new hardware: these devices
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	498	can be destroyed (if “Vin connected to GND” or “drawing more than 30mA from a GPIO”
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	499	does not make sense to you, you should probably stay away from such a project).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	500	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	501
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	502	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	503	<center>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	504	<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	505	"src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/RaspberryPi.jpg" width="313" height="209">
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	506
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	507	<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	508	"src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Arduino_Uno_-_R3.jpg" width="240" height="209">
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	509	</center>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	510	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	511
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	512	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	513	<B>Skills:</B>
255 a4579bd79197 updated Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 254 diff changeset	514	Well, you must be a hacker; happy to make things. Your desk might look like this:
254 9e2d4f273191 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 253 diff changeset	515	<center>
9e2d4f273191 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 253 diff changeset	516	<img style="-webkit-user-select: none; cursor: -webkit-zoom-in;
465 4dac76eb27d9 updated Christian Urban <urbanc@in.tum.de> parents: 285 diff changeset	517	"src="http://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/rpi-photo.jpg" width="209" height="313">
254 9e2d4f273191 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 253 diff changeset	518	</center>
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	519	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	520
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	521
254 9e2d4f273191 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 253 diff changeset	522	<li> <H4>[CU8] Proving the Correctness of Programs</H4>
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	523
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	524	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	525	I am one of the main developers of the interactive theorem prover
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	526	<A HREF="http://isabelle.in.tum.de">Isabelle</A>. This theorem prover
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	527	has been used to establish the correctness of some quite large
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	528	programs (for example an <A HREF="http://ertos.nicta.com.au/research/l4.verified/">operating system</A>).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	529	Together with colleagues from Nanjing, I used this theorem prover to establish the correctness of a
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	530	scheduling algorithm, called
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	531	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_inheritance">Priority Inheritance</A>,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	532	for real time operating systems. This scheduling algorithm is part of the operating
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	533	system that drives, for example, the
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	534	<A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rover">Mars rovers</A>.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	535	Actually, the very first Mars rover mission in 1997 did not have this
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	536	algorithm switched on and it almost caused a catastrophic mission failure (see
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	537	this youtube video <A HREF="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyx7kARrGeM">here</A>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	538	for an explanation what happened).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	539	We were able to prove the correctness of this algorithm, but were also able to
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	540	establish the correctness of some optimisations in this
465 4dac76eb27d9 updated Christian Urban <urbanc@in.tum.de> parents: 285 diff changeset	541	<A HREF="http://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/Publications/pip.pdf">paper</A>.
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	542	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	543
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	544	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	545	On a much smaller scale, there are a few small programs and underlying algorithms where it
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	546	is not really understood whether they always compute a correct result (for example the
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	547	regular expression matcher by Sulzmann and Lu in project [CU1]).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	548	The aim of this
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	549	project is to completely specify an algorithm in Isabelle and then prove it correct (that is,
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	550	it always computes the correct result).
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	551	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	552
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	553	<p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	554	<B>Skills:</B>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	555	This project is for a very good student with a knack for theoretical things and formal reasoning.
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	556	</p>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	557
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	558
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	559	<li> <H4>Earlier Projects</H4>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	560
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	561	I am also open to project suggestions from you. You might find some inspiration from my earlier projects:
465 4dac76eb27d9 updated Christian Urban <urbanc@in.tum.de> parents: 285 diff changeset	562	<A HREF="http://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/bsc-projects-12.html">BSc 2012/13</A>,
4dac76eb27d9 updated Christian Urban <urbanc@in.tum.de> parents: 285 diff changeset	563	<A HREF="http://nms.kcl.ac.uk/christian.urban/msc-projects-12.html">MSc 2012/13</A>
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	564
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	565	</ul>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	566	</TD>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	567	</TR>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	568	</TABLE>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	569
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	570	<P>
285 91b236ff06dd typos Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: 278 diff changeset	571	<!-- hhmts start --> Last modified: Sat Jun 21 08:22:20 BST 2014 <!-- hhmts end -->
253 f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	572	<a href="http://validator.w3.org/check/referer">[Validate this page.]</a>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	573	</BODY>
f4b73afc6007 added Christian Urban <christian dot urban at kcl dot ac dot uk> parents: diff changeset	574	</HTML>

author	cu
	Sat, 30 Sep 2017 23:21:24 +0100
changeset 512	a2a2afc15796
parent 465	4dac76eb27d9
permissions	-rw-r--r--