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Design Concepts in Programming Languages

Design Concepts in Programming Languages
Details | Description | Customer Reviews
By: Franklyn Turbak (Author), David Gifford (Author), Mark A. Sheldon (Contributor)  (Hardcover - 2008)
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» Hardcover: (1352 pages)
» Publisher:  The MIT Press (July 18, 2008)
» ISBN: 0262201755
» Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8.4 x 2.1 inches
» Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,229,206 in Books
» Average Customer Review: 
     
 
 
Book Description
Hundreds of programming languages are in use today--scripting languages for Internet commerce, user interface programming tools, spreadsheet macros, page format specification languages, and many others. Designing a programming language is a metaprogramming activity that bears certain similarities to programming in a regular language, with clarity and simplicity even more important than in ordinary programming. This comprehensive text uses a simple and concise framework to teach key ideas in programming language design and implementation. The book's unique approach is based on a family of syntactically simple pedagogical languages that allow students to explore programming language concepts systematically. It takes as premise and starting point the idea that when language behaviors become incredibly complex, the description of the behaviors must be incredibly simple. The book presents a set of tools (a mathematical metalanguage, abstract syntax, operational and denotational semantics) and uses it to explore a comprehensive set of programming language design dimensions, including dynamic semantics (naming, state, control, data), static semantics (types, type reconstruction, polymporphism, effects), and pragmatics (compilation, garbage collection). The many examples and exercises offer students opportunities to apply the foundational ideas explained in the text. Specialized topics and code that implements many of the algorithms and compilation methods in the book can be found on the book's Web site, along with such additional material as a section on concurrency and proofs of the theorems in the text. The book is suitable as a text for an introductory graduate or advanced undergraduate programming languages course; it can also serve as a reference for researchers and practitioners.



Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review
4.8 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
5 Reviews
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35 of 35 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars An outstanding treatment of programming language theory, March 22, 2009
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This review is from: Design Concepts in Programming Languages (Hardcover)
The book is about various concepts encountered in various kinds of programming languages: denotational and operational (BOS/SOS) semantics, issues of state and control, type systems, modules, modeling effects and compilation.
Every concept is introduced by defining the semantics of a language that has this concept and exploring the design dimensions and issues of this concept and language.
Concepts are gradually accumulated, and by the time you reach the chapter on modules you've got a CBV language with records, mutable state, polymorphic algebraic data types, a System F type system with type inference and a hint of dependent types, abstract data types and first-class dynamically loadable modules.

The tools used for description are of course the good old denotational and operational semantics and typing judgements and derivation trees; but each element of those is clearly and succintly described in text; it happens to me all the time that I am reading a type... Read more
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars well worth the price, January 19, 2009
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S. Saha (Manhattan, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Design Concepts in Programming Languages (Hardcover)
If you want to pursue PL in any detail, you might as well buy this book now because very soon most schools are going to start using it/recommending it as a text in grad-level intro PL courses. I used Winskell in grad school and had forgotten most of it. This book is definitely more accessible and covers a lot more material and is much more up-to-date with current research. It's a lot of fun to read and I predict its going to become *the* book in its field very shortly.
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic book!, February 18, 2009
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This review is from: Design Concepts in Programming Languages (Hardcover)
Really wonderful book, well-written, easy to read, covers many topics. Very formal and yet so readable. All code within the book is written in s-exps syntax, and the book covers topics such as type inference, monads etc. Need I say more? :-)
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