Practical Foundations for Programming Languages 1st Edition

Practical Foundations for Programming languages manages to cover much of the syntax a programming language designer might want to include in a programming language by creating an abstract way of looking at languages and then applying these concepts to particular aspects of programming language design. First he presents syntactic objects (abstract syntax trees) then defines a form of induction over these (structural induction). Next he defines statics, which the parsing and type checking of code in a particular programming language and dynamics which is how a program is to be executed. Finally, he applies these abstract concepts to a variety of different aspects of language design, everything from exceptions to sub-typing to classes and methods. If you are interested in creating a small language and have already fixed on the type of language you would like, this is probably not the book for you. Also, if you are looking for a nuts and bolts approach to presenting language design, this is probably not the book for you either. However, if you are looking for a method to explore the various approaches to the design of programming languages, Practical Foundations of Programming Languages is definitely a book worth checking out.

This book provides an in-depth look at the formal semantics of a wide variety of language features. Previously scattered across many other books and papers, Prof. Harper provides accessible introductions to each of these features. Readers new to the area or not as familiar with PL theory will benefit from the work he has clearly done to separate the discussion of each feature to only the necessary prerequisites.The one thing I would have also liked to see in this book was a set of self-study problems. He has been working with and teaching this material for many years, and example problems that capture the common mistakes he has seen from students and other researchers would have helped me as I studied this book on my own.

Keep in mind this is a textbook which is designed to teach the principles of programming languages. This is for expert programmers. You aren't going to learn how to program anything reading this book.What this is for, is advanced programmers who want to understand how programming languages are written, or to write one of their own.It's more academic than practical. It's good but was a bit over my head, even though I program for a living.

For me, this book offers a lot of fresh perspective on various aspects of programming languages. It's very concise and great as a reference. Newcomers should probably read it together with Pierce's Types and Programming Languages.