Concepts in Programming Languages [Hardcover]

John C. Mitchell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521780985 | ISBN-13: 978-0521780988 | Publication Date: October 14, 2002 | Edition: 1st

Concepts in Programming Languages elucidates the central concepts used in modern programming languages, such as functions, types, memory management, and control. The book is unique in its comprehensive presentation and comparison of major object-oriented programming languages. Separate chapters examine the history of objects, Simula and Smalltalk, and the prominent languages C++ and Java. The author presents foundational topics, such as lambda calculus and denotational semantics, in an easy-to-read, informal style, focusing on the main insights provided by these theories. Advanced topics include concurrency, concurrent object-oriented programming, program components, and inter-language interoperability. A chapter on logic programming illustrates the importance of specialized programming methods for certain kinds of problems.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The book's three goals are achieved admirably: to discuss the design decisions and tradeoffs of various programming languages, to compare programming languages to deepen understanding, and to present language-specific programming techniques... This is the text one would use in a course on programming languages. Highly recommended." Choice

"It is an excellent book on programming languages, and one that lecturers would enjoy using and students would gain much from having and reading...The exercises are excellent, and range from basic exercises to ones that, if they don't inspire new careers, ought at least generate fine projects. ..I am sure this book will be a success and we will soon see further editions...Indeed it is an inspiring book." LTSN Book Reviews

Book Description

This general textbook on programming languages is designed for undergraduate andbeginning graduate students with some knowledge of basic programming. It teaches the concepts that appear in programming languages, issues that arise in their implementation, and the way that language design affects program development. Each chapter contains an extensive list of homework exercises, tested at several universities.A unique feature of the book is the comprehensive presentation of and comparison between major object-oriented programming languages. Separate chapters examine the history of objects, Simula and Smalltalk, and the prominent languages C++ and Java, giving the reader a solid understanding of the design goals for each of these languages and the central trade-offs between programming expressiveness and implementation efficiency.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 540 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1st edition (October 14, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521780985
• ISBN-13: 978-0521780988
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 8.1 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #300,758 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good introduction to the subject, June 18, 2007

By 

Jeffrey Rubard (Beaverton, OR US) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Concepts in Programming Languages (Hardcover)

I can't speak to John Mitchell's skill as a lecturer, but some of the complaints here seem to betray a misunderstanding of the purpose of the book: to serve as an introduction to programming language theory, such as can be found in Mitchell's other book *Foundations for Programming Languages*. Mitchell is taking you *out of* the marketable skills zone and into abstract computer science, and he's being pretty nice about it -- the book contains friendly precises of topics like lambda calculus and denotational semantics, which make up the formal core of programming languages. What you will learn has applications in all popular programming languages, even if it's not spelled out in the text.

ML was a good choice as an example language, because it includes many of the features a programming language might have (being both imperative and functional), and furthermore is a serious research language on account of its well-understood semantics and type system. Focusing on it to explain core concepts was not a mistake. Mitchell knows how to do it the other way, too: explanations of the basic elements of object-orientation are parceled out over several notable OO languages, providing a way to compare and contrast how the major OO concepts can be implemented. (I didn't find the final chapter, Apt's summary of Prolog, as helpful: the declarative paradigm is too far removed from what was developed in the rest of the book.)

On account of its relatively gentle explanations and the importance of its concepts for all aspects of CS, this would be a good book for a relative beginner in CS to pick up (provided they can comprehend more than just code). But if you find it too repellent, you're probably not going to be much happier with more advanced treatments: its character just reflects the nature of the field.

23 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Missing the point, August 9, 2004

By 

James Walden (US) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Concepts in Programming Languages (Hardcover)

While I cannot speak to the quality of Mitchell's course, having only read his book, the earlier criticisms of his use of ML in the book are missing the point of a programming languages class. It's not meant to teach you a random sampling of the 2500+ computer languages that are out there. The idea is to learn about the fundamental paradigms of programming, with a focus on the functional and logical approaches since students are generally already familiar with imperative and object-oriented programming.

ML is one of several good choices for illustrating functional programming, and is actually one of the more popular functional languages (especially the OCaML dialect.) There are many well written books and tutorials on the ML family of languages freely available on the web if you need more examples or detail than he provides in this text. However, the point isn't to learn ML, but rather that once you understand functional programming in any language, you can take advantage of its power, not only in languages like perl and python which offer some limited but nice functional features like map and anonymous functions, but also in imperative languages like C via function pointers and callback techniques.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent introduction to programming language concepts, April 11, 2010

By 

Tomas Petricek - See all my reviews

This review is from: Concepts in Programming Languages (Hardcover)

I really enjoyed reading Concepts in Programming Languages.

The book covers a little bit of everything. It includes an introduction to mathematical foundations such as computability theory and lambda calculus, but I found it quite readable (at the time when I was reading it, which was early during my undergraduate studies). It also includes a tiny bit on the semantics of programming languages (that is, how to describe the meaning formally), which is another important concept from the mathematical foundations of programming languages.

Then it talks about many programming languages and concepts that come from them and are interesting including LISP (which is a basis for Clojure), ML (a basis for Microsoft's F#) but also Simula and Smalltalk (two fundamental OO languages that inspired all modern OO languages, both dynamic such as Ruby and static such as Java). It also talks about C++ and Java (practical OO languages with quite different approach). There are also a few notes about different approaches to concurrency (quite important nowadays!) and logical programming (an iteresting alternative).

It doesn't go into much details and covers wide range of topics, which I consider as a benefit if you want to read it to get a broad overview of the programming language theory. The book actually motivated my current interest in programming languages :-).