Handbook of Programming Language (4 Volume Set : Object-Oriented Programming Languages, Imperative Programming Languages, Little Languages and Tools, Fu nctional and Logic Programming Languages) [Hardcover]

Peter H. Salus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1998 | Series: Handbook of Programming Language Series

This set includes "Object-Oriented Programming Languages", "Imperative Programming Languages", "Little Languages and Tools" and "Functional and Logic Programming Languages".

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Macmillan Technical Pub; Slipcase edition (December 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1578701341
• ISBN-13: 978-1578701346
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.2 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,311,474 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Bum Rap?, October 13, 2006

By 

Jevons & Hollerith Books (Columbia, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Handbook of Programming Language (4 Volume Set : Object-Oriented Programming Languages, Imperative Programming Languages, Little Languages and Tools, Fu nctional and Logic Programming Languages) (Hardcover)

Some reviews for individual volumes in this set, as well as one for the set as a whole, complain of (1) omissions and (2) unmet expectations. A short quote from Peter Salus' introduction may help put these complaints in context: "The aim . . . is to provide a single comprehensive source of information concerning a variety of individual programming languages and methodologies for computing professionals." This work is intended to show the shape of a discipline and its history. It is not a programmer's reference manual.

Comprehensive does not mean all-inclusive. Any work comprised of many individual contributions is always a compromise, always a bit uneven. And editors have blind spots; on the second page of the introduction Salus omits any mention of Wilhelm Shickard when discussing early calculators. But give the guy a break! He is a linguist by training, not a historian specializing in medieval technology.

The publisher could have adjusted buyer expectations by providing a table of contents and list of contributors, as well as an excerpt from the introduction -- information that would be available both on Amazon and through the Library of Congress catalog. A complete contributor list IS now in the product "Wiki" for this set.

Finally, a careful buyer, unsure whether a purchase will be worthwhile, can always check out a copy from the library first. Even public libraries which might not have this on the shelf can provide it through inter-library loan for a patron.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars This set sucks, August 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Handbook of Programming Language (4 Volume Set : Object-Oriented Programming Languages, Imperative Programming Languages, Little Languages and Tools, Fu nctional and Logic Programming Languages) (Hardcover)

I am very disappointed by this set.

The first volume, Object-Oriented Programming, is the largest of the four. It has some interesting articles on Smalltalk and C++, but it also has some filler, including a useless article on CORBA, and devotes (in my opinion) too much time to static OO languages. It would have been nicer to see articles on Self, or on Objective-C, rather than say on Modula-3.

The second volume, Imperative Languages, doesn't have much to recommend it, either. The section on C regurgitates Kernighan and Ritche. The section on Icon was interesting, but I question its usefullness. How many people actually use Icon ?

Both the Little Languages and Functional and Logic Programming Languages are marred by typographical errors and omissions, which make it difficult to see the author's intent. The Little Languages book is probably my favorite out of the four volumes. I enjoyed the articles on Tcl and Python, and found the material on troff and eqn to be interesting as well.

The Functional and Logic volume devotes all of its functional languages discussion to Lisp and its offspring. This is really pathetic. Haskell and ML are both mentioned in the forward. Why couldn't one of them get an article ?

All in all, the set is not worth the money. The books don't seem very focused. Some articles are basically languages references, while others present histories of the languages, and offer basic intro material. I'm not sure what the reader is supposed to get out of this. It would have been better to include language comparisions, and have more discussion of language features and examples of real-world usage.

I think that the average person would be better off buying Tim Budd's book on OOP, and references on the imperative, scripting and functional languages of their choice.