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Misc BooksRelations of Language and Thought: The View from Sign Language and Deaf ChildrenRelations of Language and Thought: The View from Sign Language and Deaf Children provides an interesting angle on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that we periodically discuss on LtU. A small sample from Google Books is available.
Sign language is an obvious candidate for linguistic study, since the mode is visual as opposed to oral/aural. The summary of one of the authors is telling:
On a programming language level, I can't help but think that sign language offers valuable clues into the nature of visual PLs (though I haven't quite nailed down any specifics). ASL on Wikipedia informs us that signs can be broken down into three categories: With the majority of signs being opaque. As much as those who design visual languages would like them to be intuitive - falling into the Transparent and Translucent category - I figure you still have to end up using many signs that are only meaningful internally to the language at hand. On a personal level, I have recently been attempting to delve into ASL. I've almost got the alphabet and numbers down, and have a vocabulary of about 100 additional signs - which probably means that I'm at the proficiency level of somewhere between ankle biter and sesame street. I do find it to be a fascinating language. I noticed when I was looking at the course offerings for college (my son started university this year) that ASL is now offered for foreign language credit (wish it had been offered when I was a student all those years ago). By Chris Rathman at 2009-09-02 16:04 | General | Misc Books | 13 comments | other blogs | 19450 reads
In the Land of Invented LanguagesJust finished reading In the Land of Invented Languages, by Arika Okrent. It makes an accessible read for many topics in language.
Aside from this passage, the book barely mentions PL's at all. But programming languages are, by definition, invented languages (and, no, Perl does not qualify as natural), I think there are many parallels to be drawn. Most language inventors don't do it for the money - creating PL's is not a way to untold wealth. And there are a thousand invented (and programming) languages, so the chance of success is rather slim (and mostly accidental). The book itself is more an informal narrative that goes between personal experience, to examining the persons behind the languages, and on to a more critical analysis of the languages spotlighted. Although there are over 500 listed languages in the appendix, there is only in depth coverage of a dozen or so. The major periods covered:
Lot's of tangential topics that are fun (Chinese writing, Hebrew, Tolkien, etc) and covers some very colorful characters. Not sure if PL designers are quite so eccentric, though I suspect it's only because we are still early in the game for PL evolution. PinS and RWH are Jolt FinalistsBooks on two of the languages that get a lot of airplay on LtU have made the finalist list for this year's Jolt awards.
Congratulations to Martin, Lex, Bill, John, Bryan, and Don! Whether or not either book wins, it's quite a sea change that two sophisticated, statically typed functional programming languages with research origins are getting so much mainstream attention. From the FAQ
College PublicationsAs a result of a refereeing request, I took a look at the website of College Publications, and was very pleased with what I saw. It is a non-profit publisher founded by Jane Spurr and the omnipresent (at least in logic) Dov Gabbay. From their "About us" page:
The existence of this publisher is very good for the kind of things that LtU stands for in much the same way that Logical Methods in Computer Science is, and supposedly community focussed organisations such as the ACM are not. Take a look at their PL offerings in their computing series, edited by Ian Mackie. Design Concepts in Programming Languages is now availableWe last mentioned this book back in 2005, when the text was available as a series of drafts, and LtU user raould updated the post back in late August letting LtU readers know you can get it from MIT Press, but to be sure: the book is out. Not to play favorites, but Amazon currently has it new for $54 USD, and it retails for $75 USD. Powell's currently has one copy in stock as well (thanks Tim!). And it's massive. At 1,322 numbered pages, it'll take me a while to get through, but I hope to post a review once I'm done. LtU readers might be interested to know that the book is based on and is now used in MIT's graduate programming languages course, 6.821. Notes on Introduction To AlgorithmsPeteris Krumins has been posting his notes on MIT’s Introduction to Algorithms. The notes are valuable for anyone interested in working their way through the CLRS text and MIT Open Courseware videos.
Although not directly tied to programming languages, every PL has to eventually be able to express algorithms. Aside from Knuth, CLRS is probably the closest approximation to a comprehensive approach to algortihms. The text itself is language agnostic - the authors use their own brand of pseudo-code to describe the algorithms. This has the advantage of allowing the reader to focus on the algorithms at a higher level, rather than get bogged down in the specifics of any PL. The downside, at least in my estimation, is that the authors don't make it particularly easy to implement the algorithms in any specific PL. The pseudo code conflates common data structures (such as arrays) with properties/attributes that can be tagged with those structures. And some of the algorithms refer to variables that are outside of the scope of the function. Also, like Knuth, most of the algorithms are steeped in state, making it hard to implement them with functional programming approaches. That said, the video lectures and the accompanying notes above are good resources for any that want to self-study CLRS. Here are the notes thus far:
Solutions to SICP ExercisesSICP gets many nods when it comes to introductory texts to programming and the study of PLs. I've been slowly working my way through SICP in a number of different PLs, most notably Oz and Alice ML. In that process, I've come across Eli Bendersky's methodical solutions to the SICP Exercises in a series of blog posts. His review of SICP is instructive of the role of the exercises:
Highly recommended reading for anyone that is working their way through SICP. Unlike my own work, which concentrates solely on code, his explanations are quite good. He uses mostly Common Lisp for the solutions, though resorting to Scheme when it makes for more concise solutions. The Little Books in OzTranslating code from one programming language to another is a black art. Even if successful in capturing functionality, each PL has its own styles, idioms and community morals. Doing automated translations (which I have done) has more misses than hits. Doing it manually gets you closer but it can require an inordinate amount of time to get it just right. Even so, PL translations are something that I personally enjoy as it is particularly instructive in teaching the strengths and limitations of expressing different concepts (though I usually catch flak for violating the social values of the target language). My latest postings into this gray area are translations of the remaining Little Books to Oz - consisting of The Little Schemer, The Seasoned Schemer, The Little MLer and A Little Java, A Few Patterns (previous LtU post on The Reasoned Schemer in Oz). The Little Books are the antithesis to recipe books. There's not much code here that can be plugged into a project. The aim is to systematically teach programming thought processes. The books are useful for those wanting to learn Scheme (or ML). But the lessons are also useful even if those are not your particular language(s) of choice. Such didactic material may not be everyone's cup of tea, but they do represent a unique manner in which to teach (and still hoping for The Little Haskeller). Along a similar line, I've started in on Introduction to Algorithms in Oz. Previously, I made a weak attempt at Knuth which I'll get back to one of these years, but found that translating MIX to higher level languages was tedious and time consuming. The CLRS book is a bit easier to translate, but the language they chose to express algorithms in doesn't seem to map to any exact known programming language in the universe. The language is concise, which was their aim, but it takes some shortcuts and has some peculiarities. Also, like Knuth, the algorithms are very much oriented to having mutable state. (Purely Functional Data Structures is in my queue). Anyhow, I find it interesting that the authors of the two best known book(s) on algorithms chose to invent their own language rather than use an existing PL. By Chris Rathman at 2008-07-31 17:05 | Misc Books | Teaching & Learning | 7 comments | other blogs | 9938 reads
ACM Classic Books SeriesPaul McJones alerts us that the ACM posted PDF versions of some books in its Classic Books Series, which are available to anyone who creates a free ACM Web Account. Among the currently available books, LtU readers are likely to be particularly interested in Hoare and Jones's Essays in computing science, Adele Goldberg and David Robson's Smalltalk-80: the language and its implementation, and Dahl, Dijkstra, and Hoare's Structured programming. Long time readers will also know that I highly recommend Papert's Mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas to anyone interested with the effect computers might have on education. Papert's Logo remains to this day the best children oriented programming language, but even if you disagree with me about this, his book is a must read. By Ehud Lamm at 2008-01-16 03:00 | History | Misc Books | Teaching & Learning | 4 comments | other blogs | 24012 reads
Logic for PhilosophyA draft textbook by Theodore Sider aimed at philsophy graduate students that while not as technical as computer scientists are used to, may be of interest due to the explicit discussion of extensions (e.g., modal operators), deviations (e.g., multi-valued logic) and variations (such as the Sheffer Stroke) on basic propositional logic. The book includes chapters on counterfactuals and two-dimensional modal logic that may include material new to PLT wonks. |
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