Class 41: Debriefing on Presentations

Held: Wednesday, 11 May 2011

Summary: We reflect upon our weeks of presentations and review some important topics.

Related Pages:

• EBoard.

Notes:

• My schedule is triply-hectic this week: Normal end of semester stuff, an insane number of extra meetings, and a family crises. I will be in my office as much as possible, but it will vary. Call or email to check if I'm here.
• I plan to distribute the questions (but not the choices) for the final on Friday. I plan to get you presentation grades tomorrow night. I plan to get you as many grades as possible next Monday.
• Don't forget CS picnic on Friday!
• EC for the final CS extra of the year [academic].
• EC for the psych presentation today [academic].

Overview:

• Debriefing.
• Continuations, Revisited.
• CPS, Revisited.

Debriefing

• What were the greatest strengths of the presentations (overall)?
• What were the greatest weaknesses (overall)?
• Was it a worthwhile use of class time?

Continuations

• Let's revisit continuations a bit because they are important and clearly complex.
• What is a continuation?
• Identify the continuations in the following (assuming eager, left-to-right evaluation of arguments)

  > (square (+ (* 2 x) (/ 2 x)))
  

• Why give the programmer explicit access to continuations?
• How might we give the programmer explicit access to continuations?
• Scheme's call-with-current-continuation (aka call/cc).
• Some experiments with call/cc.

Continuation-Passing Style (CPS)

• How does CPS relate to continuations?
• How does CPS relate to monads?