Introductory description

Programming languages are the medium through which programmers precisely describe concepts, formulate algorithms, and reason about solutions. In the course of a career, a cyber professional may work with many different languages, separately or together. If developing software, they must understand the programming models underlying different languages and make informed design choices in languages supporting multiple complementary approaches. The cyber professional is likely to need to learn new languages and programming constructs. They therefore must understand the principles underlying how programming language features are defined, composed, and implemented. The effective use of programming languages, and appreciation of their limitations, also requires a basic knowledge of programming language translation and static program analysis, as well as run-time components such as memory management.

This module enables students to develop insight into the significant differences between different programming paradigms. Object oriented programming, functional programming and event driven programming are given special emphasis. Students develop solutions under these different paradigms to embed theoretical concepts into professional practice.

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Outline content
The content of this module will be taught from a cyber security perspective.

• object-oriented programming
• functional programming
• event-driven and reactive programming
• type systems
• program representation
• language translation and execution
• syntax analysis
• compiler semantic analysis
• code generation

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• 1 – Evaluate the relative merits of different programming paradigms to address cyber security problems.
• 2 - Develop small-scale programs that employ the idioms of a programming paradigm in a conventional manner.

Indicative reading list

Aho, A. V., Lam, Monica S., Sethi, R. and Ullman, Jeffrey D., “Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools”, 2 Ed, Pearson (2013)

Bird, Richard, “Thinking Functionally with Haskell”, Cambridge University Press (2014)

Friedman, Daniel P. and Wand, Mitchell, “Essentials of Programming Languages”, 3 Revised Ed, MIT Press (2008)

Subject specific skills

1 – Evaluate the relative merits of different programming paradigms to address cyber security problems.
2 - Develop small-scale programs that employ the idioms of a programming paradigm in a conventional manner.

Transferable skills

Problem solving