Programming Language: The Path of Practice

Author: Michael Scott
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2005-03-01
Features: "A practical textbook that innovatively integrates the design of programming languages with compiler design. It has been selected as a standard textbook and primary reference by over 100 universities and colleges worldwide!" Programming Language Pragmatics discusses the fundamental principles of various important languages in use, focusing on the key connections between language design and language implementation. It emphasizes the critical issues most important for professional programmers. With its rigorous yet accessible style, it prepares you to choose the best language for specific projects, use known languages more effectively, and learn new languages faster and more comprehensively. This is a distinctive textbook whose core is to explore the principles and techniques of programming languages. It combines knowledge from traditional programming language textbooks and compiler textbooks, adding materials on assembly-level architecture to meet the needs of students who haven't taken computer organization courses. Through examples in various languages, it explains important foundational concepts of programming languages, discusses the relationships between these concepts, and explains the formation and evolution of many language structures, as well as the origins of their current forms. The book also provides a detailed discussion of how compilers work and their processes, explaining what they do to source programs and why. Each chapter concludes with review questions and more challenging exercises. The special value of these exercises lies in guiding students to deepen their understanding of various languages and technologies. The book has been used in U.S. universities for over a decade and is currently used by many important universities in Europe and America for "Programming Languages" or "Software Systems" courses. It is suitable for upper-level undergraduate or first-year graduate students, and many of its contents are also valuable for professional programmers. The author, Michael Scott, is a renowned scholar in the field of computer science, and the translator is Professor Qiu Zongyan of Peking University, who is highly knowledgeable and has a fluent translation style. It is a rare masterpiece with both excellent writing and translation.