Examines the principles underlying the major paradigms of programming languages, for senior and graduate students in programing languages. Covers the history of the field, attribute grammars, inclusion polymorphism, the PROLOG logic programming paradigm, lambda calculus, denotational semantics, and the axiomatic approach of Hoare. Includes exercises and examples in Ada, Modula-3, and ML languages. Assumes familiarity with programming. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
I read this several times during a rather unfortunate week in a mental institution, breathing deeply for the first time that ineffable air of the λ-calculus. A gentle introduction to PLC, with the best coverage I've seen of denotational and axiomatic semantics outside of restricted, special-topic texts. This was being used (along with Scott's Programming Language Pragmatics) for GT's CS6390 at the time. I'll be taking 6390 next Fall (with good ol' Spencer Rugaber), and am hoping to lay a boot-sized stomping across its face.