Lambda the Ultimate

inactiveTopic Advanced Programming Language Design (Finkel)
started 8/6/2000; 12:51:56 PM - last post 1/11/2003; 12:40:08 PM
Ehud Lamm - Advanced Programming Language Design (Finkel)  blueArrow
8/6/2000; 12:51:56 PM (reads: 24788, responses: 8)
Advanced Programming Language Design (Finkel)
The entire book is online.

It seems no book really covers the whole subject. This book contains some interesting topics.

A list of useful criteria:

  1. Simplicity
  2. Uniformity
  3. Orthogonality
  4. Abstraction
  5. Clarity
  6. Information Hiding
  7. Modularity
  8. Safety
  9. Expressiveness
  10. Efficiency

Posted to Misc-Books by Ehud Lamm on 8/6/00; 12:52:26 PM

andrew cooke - Re: Advanced Programming Language Design (Finkel)  blueArrow
2/7/2001; 6:26:25 AM (reads: 4414, responses: 0)
This has moved to http://cseng.aw.com/book/related/0,3833,0805311912+20,00.html

Biep - Re: Advanced Programming Language Design (Finkel)  blueArrow
7/17/2001; 4:54:15 AM (reads: 4157, responses: 0)
Regarding point 9, Expressiveness, the following may be interesting:

On the Expressive Power of Programming Languages.

And more specialised:

Expressive Power of Declarative Programming Languages;

Relational Expressive Power of Constraint Query Languages.

Nick Taylor - Re: Advanced Programming Language Design (Finkel)  blueArrow
6/23/2002; 12:26:13 PM (reads: 3411, responses: 0)
We used this book for our upper-year PL course at Waterloo. We found it to be woefully inadequate in some areas (lambda calculus and type theory, for example). It would probably be better if he cut out some of the languages he covers, and focused on a few core ones. Also, in the print version, there are about 15 pages missing (I think), somewhere around chapter 9.

Ehud Lamm - Re: Advanced Programming Language Design (Finkel)  blueArrow
12/24/2002; 10:13:13 AM (reads: 2684, responses: 0)
Thr URL changed yet again. I coorect the URL given in the original message.

Martin Sandin - Re: Advanced Programming Language Design (Finkel)  blueArrow
1/9/2003; 6:28:07 AM (reads: 2585, responses: 0)
I enjoyed this book much exactly because it didn't dwelve deeper into many issues. It covered a lot of different topics in a casual manner and managed to pique my interest in some. I like this book for what it was and would recommend reading it to anyone who wants introductory material on many topics to get an overview of some important concepts in this field.

Frank Atanassow - Re: Advanced Programming Language Design (Finkel)  blueArrow
1/10/2003; 8:33:31 AM (reads: 2557, responses: 0)
The link is now:

http://www.awprofessional.com/catalog/product.asp?product_id={;92E30B39-5D91-45F9-9919-D202BE6341F9}&selectDescTypeId={A80972E0-1077-4518-954C-44E43E341DF7}

(Look here PLT Online. :)

Frank Atanassow - Re: Advanced Programming Language Design (Finkel)  blueArrow
1/11/2003; 10:09:06 AM (reads: 2543, responses: 1)
At this moment, the number of reads for this topic is at 12398...! I wonder if someone posted a link to here on some popular website.

Ehud Lamm - Re: Advanced Programming Language Design (Finkel)  blueArrow
1/11/2003; 12:40:08 PM (reads: 2608, responses: 0)
No. The reason is much simpler, the link is on the right navigation bar of this site ("Language Evaluation"), and this is one of the earliest messages on LtU. For more than two years (from Aug. 6, 2000), LtU visitors are checking this message when they navigate the site.

The amazing thing is that some people are still replying to this message (some 5450 messages later)...