

Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation by Shriram Krishnamurthi (Free Book) - johnm
http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Books/ProgLangs/

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icey
Shriram is a super-sharp guy. One of the best talks I've heard for scheme
evangelism was his "The Swine before Perl" talk.

(edit)

[http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Talks/SwineBeforePe...](http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Talks/SwineBeforePerl/)

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jcl
I haven't read the book in detail, although I've read the course notes it's
based on. He has you build (in Scheme) a number of interpreters for a variety
of small programming languages. They all share the Scheme syntax, but they
have different features than Scheme, so you can see the benefits of each
specific language feature and how you can implement it. By the end, you've
written many different interpreters, including a compiler for a functional
language. (I'm not sure how this compares to SICP, but I get the impression
that it covers similar ground.)

At the time, it was an eye-opening experience: I learned that a programming
language is much more than just its syntax, and that adding features to a
language has both benefits and drawbacks. The section on compiling programs
functional programs by automatically rewriting them in the continuation-
passing style was particularly enlightening.

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kleevr
Wow, so this is a little off topic, but I'm constantly rooting around. (Book
looks awesome btw, downloaded, and 'hope' to read it).

But I saw that the book was 'free', and I wanted to take a beat on where free
things were be published. I checked google with the quoted title, zero
results.

Then I went to his site saw three links, download, download+donate, and buy
paperback. I struggled here, he was giving me no excuse not to donate if I was
going to read the book for free. Then I saw the paperback offer, and thought I
don't really consider a "book" a 'book' unless I can put it on my shelf. Thus
I would gladly pay for a paperback, and if I like his "book" that is how I
would give my return. I want a memento from our "free" digital exchange too, I
mean, if the book is worth it's salt.

But that's not the point, point is this guy published through 'LuLu', and LuLu
like Google is a name that can mean something simply because it means nothing.
Something I'll say to my voice command pc, or when I tell my friends fifty
years in the "future" I bought a _future-word-for-book_ off 'LuLu' (post
computing ubiquity).

How are they going to win? Look at their community. When I got to the page and
played around with the links, I was really blown away. I see this company
making it.

<http://LuLu.com>

~~~
kleevr
*and I realize I'm pretty late to the game, but cool site :)

~~~
myriad
Love it!

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sheriff
Shriram is one of the best professors I've had.

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cbryan
This book is great. It's by no means written in plain english; It's definitely
an academic text, but Shriram does a wonderful job of explaining how
programming languages can be implemented.

Certainly worth a page-through for any hacker.

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michael_dorfman
Thanks for that! Good book, good link.

