Programming Language Pragmatics, Third Edition

Programming Language Pragmatics, Third Edition
Authors
Michael L. Scott
ISBN
0123745144
Published
06 Apr 2009
Purchase online
amazon.com

As a textbook suitable for the classroom or self-study, Michael Scott's Programming Language Pragmatics provides a worthy tour of the theory and practice of how programming languages are run on today's computers. Clearly organized and filled with a wide-ranging perspective on over 40 different languages, this book will be appreciated for its depth and breadth of coverage on an essential topic in computer science.

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  1. Editorial Reviews
  2. Customer Reviews

Customer Reviews

Parrish M. Myers said
I am currently using this book for a class in programming semantics. The book is clear in its explanations and diagrams. I also like the additional content on the CD... this is the first book CD that I have used more than once! In my opinion great book.

zeozod said
I have found this book to be useful as a means of becoming familiar with the considerations that one needs to keep in mind when designing programming languages. I found that I needed a supplementary book on theory of computation, as those topics are relevant, but not covered in this book. On the whole, it's a well-written book, but certainly not one that teaches how to program, nor how to implement a compiler. Look elsewhere for those
kinds of practical details. This book moves too fast for that.

Dmitry Vostokov said
Every debugging engineer needs to know how the code is interpreted or compiled. Debugging complex problems or doing memory analysis on general-purpose operating systems often requires understanding the syntax and semantics of several programming languages and their run-time support. The knowledge of optimization techniques is also important for low-level debugging when the source code is not available. The following book provides an overview of all important concepts and discusses almost 50 languages. I read the first edition 6 years ago and I liked it so much that I'm now reading the third edition from cover to cover.

Thanks,
Dmitry Vostokov
Founder of DumpAnalysis Portal
Editor-in-Chief of Debugged! MZ/PE magazine

Yuanchyuan Sheu said
I enjoy the book very much. The author gives an over all introduction to the basics of the programming languages. It does not, however, dig deep into any specific area. To master in a specialized subject, one will have to seek help from other books.

As the author has stated, to learn all the subjects the book is covering, one will have to spend years (taking different courses in computer science). This book has include all the material to give an overall view of the big picture and the students are suppose to learn the material in 2 semesters.

I personally tend to think that the book is better suited for the experienced programmer for the reviewing purposes. Students that never have real world experience probably will feel the book to be very dry.

Ada said
This book offers a good introduction to basic programming language concepts: scanning/lexical analysis, parsing, semantic analysis, and several other compilation phases. It covers functional languages as well. It's easy to follow too.

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