Essentials of Programming Languages, Third 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 provides students with a deep, working understanding of the essential concepts of programming languages. Most of these essentials relate to the semantics, or meaning, of program elements, and the text uses interpreters (short programs that directly analyze an abstract representation of the program text) to express the semantics of many essential language elements in a way that is both clear and executable. The approach is both analytical and hands-on. The book provides views of programming languages using widely varying levels of abstraction, maintaining a clear connection between the high-level and low-level views. Exercises are a vital part of the text and are scattered throughout; the text explains the key concepts, and the exercises explore alternative designs and other issues. The complete Scheme code for all the interpreters and analyzers in the book can be found online through The MIT Press web site. For this new edition, each chapter has been revised and many new exercises have been added. Significant additions have been made to the text, including completely new chapters on modules and continuation-passing style. Essentials of Programming Languages can be used for both graduate and undergraduate courses, and for continuing education courses for programmers.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262062798
• ISBN13: 9780262062794
• Release Date: April 2008
• Publisher: MIT Press
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 8.0" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

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.