Re: Language Books

  >> Russell Rader wrote:
  >> I am looking for something that explains and contrasts most of the major
  >> paradigms (imperative, object-oriented, functional, logic) and whatever
  >> other minor flavors are out there now. Also, any book that goes into
  >> formal specification of semantics (as opposed to the grammar) would be
  >> interesting as long as it's not too abstract or mathematical. (Is that


I've used two "one chapter per language" books over the years:


Samuel Kamin, _Programming Languages: An Interpreter-Based Approach_
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0078823439/theinvincibleeleA/


this book covers Scheme, Smalltalk, Prolog, and a few other languages I can't
recall off the top of my head, and provides an interpreter written in Pascal
for a subset of each language. Highly recommended.


and R. Sebesta, _Concepts of Programming Languages_
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0805371338/theinvincibleeleA/


this book also has a few sections devoted to semantics.


I've also used Friedman, Wand, and Hayne's book _Essentials of Programming
Languages_
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0070224439/theinvincibleeleA/


which has good coverage of programming language design topics but is not good
for learning how to use commonly-used lanaguges other than scheme. It's a good
book if you want to learn how to design a programming language, though.


scott
--
J. Scott Hofmann Software Engineer
shofmann at intertv dot com Interactive Television Company
http://www.seas.gwu.edu/student/shofmann/ (703) 525-5625 x28
[I fixed up the URLs, since Scott wasn't sure his were right. -John]




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