Essentials of Programming Languages, 2nd Edition

by Christopher T. Haynes, Mitchell Wand, Daniel P. Friedman

Book Overview

A new edition of a textbook that provides students with a deep, working understanding of the essential concepts of programming languages, completely revised, with significant new material.This book... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262062178
• ISBN13: 9780262062176
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
• Length: 389 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Very good book

I've taught fundamentals of programming languages, a course for 2nd year undergraduate students, using this book and it's been a success. The reader must know how to program in order to understand the book, I accept that, but the idea of teaching the basis of programming languages by creating one is great. Additionally, the use of Scheme as a language for developing is crucial. On the other hand, the quality of the book and the paper are good. It has a lot of very decent exercises and the subjects are well-explained.

very methodical and simple

its really a nice book to start with functional programming and thinkin in terms of recursion. you can easily write a cool interpreter by following this book cover to .... doesnt explain lambda calculus and combinators in much detail though

excellent

I had a lot of fun going through the book and following the steps to build an increasingly sophisticated language interpreter.Now if only I can get a job writing scheme/lisp code, I'll be all set.

Great book

I used this book in university and studied under Professor Friedman. This book perfect encapsulates the content of our course. In addition, it makes understanding the structure of programming languages easy.

A Great Programming Language Text

I've used this book to teach an undergraduate programming language for 4 years now. I believe it to be the finest text in the area because of its approach to the subject. Many books in this area are what I call smorgasborg books--leading the reader through one language syntax after another without ever getting to what really matters: programming language operation. In EoPL, Freidman, Wand, and Haynes solve this problem by using a standard technique of computer science: using the right langauge for the job. In this case the job is progrmaming language operation and the language is Scheme. Don't be fooled into thinking you're learning Scheme--you're actually learning a great deal about programming languages along the way. The book covers the operational semantics of the most important features in programming languages and give users a clear understanding of the infrastructure of programming langauges along the way. Highly recommended. See http://lal.cs.byu.edu/cs330 for a course based on this book.