Programming Language Pragmatics, Second Edition,   ISBN:9780126339512

Customer Rating: 

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

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

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.

Customer Rating: 

I bought this book hoping for a thorough yet pragmatic guide to teach myself from scratch how to write the front half or so of a compiler. I don't recommend this book for that intent. It's just too high level to be the sole source of instruction.

Chapter two dedicates 9-10 pages for scanning. I'm not looking for endless checklists of minutia, but in that 10 pages why spend time on optimizing a DFA? Is that pragmatic?

About 30 pages of chapter two are spent on parsing, and a decent chunk of that is used for figures. To me that speaks of a text intended to accompany an oral presentation. I have no access to such a lecture -- just the book.

The rest of the book covers many many subjects. I look forward to using Programming Language Pragmatics as a reference in the future. But not for teaching oneself to write the front half of a compiler.

Customer Rating: 

Programming Language Pragmatics 2nd Edition (PLP2e) is a fantastic book that covers a great deal of information. It starts with explaining lexing and parsing, and then goes into scope, target machine instructions, control flow, data structures, a number of paradigms, and building a runnable program. It touches on pretty much every aspect of computer programming, and with deep and insightful knowledge.

While it's not as specific as some other books (language specific references, compiler construction texts, etc), it is a great beginning and reference for a wide range of topics. The bibliography of this book is incredible. I have marked a large number of papers/books from the bib that I now want to read in full.

The bonus information on the CD is also very good, including all the source code from the book, extra sections, and links to other resources.