[HN Gopher] Programming Languages: Application and Interpretatio...
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Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation, 3rd Ed
Author : spdegabrielle
Score : 243 points
Date : 2022-12-09 22:08 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.plai.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.plai.org)
| [deleted]
| JackMorgan wrote:
| Great course, I took it a few years ago while working full time
| and loved it. I recommend this right alongside SICP for the
| engineer who wants to dig deeper.
| trenchgun wrote:
| What does SICP offer that this book does not?
| skrishnamurthi wrote:
| SICP is mainly a book about how to structure systems. It also
| tells you how languages work, but in far less detail.
|
| PLAI (this book) teaches you how languages work. It also
| tells you a bit about how to structure systems, but that is
| not its goal. In part that is not a goal because of the
| existence of books like SICP and, increasingly, DCIC
| [https://dcic-world.org/].
| gavinray wrote:
| Oh wow. If I was an educator, this book _" A Data-Centric
| Introduction to Computing"_ is what I would put in front of
| people first.
|
| Everything you do in software is in service of moving and
| munging of data, programming paradigms are tools secondary
| to that.
| iwsk wrote:
| >How SMoL Becomes Large
|
| 30 seconds into opening the textbook and I already like it.
| ngcc_hk wrote:
| Great work.
|
| Sorry side track totally. as part of my degree is under a Chicago
| School professor, who I respect but still his work find puzzling.
| Can this be a counter-example ... just like many others open
| source project. The problem of public good i.e. those unlike fish
| cannot be eaten. He went on to do work on trademark, copyright
| and patent. Well copyright is what open source rely upon he would
| say. But what is the incentive of doing it. Would the total
| output less because of this ... he would ask.
|
| The question as normal here: why not say sell it and give the
| money to something you like, like charity.
| skrishnamurthi wrote:
| I'm afraid I don't really understand this question. I am
| _interpreting_ it as, "Why is the author giving it away for
| free instead of charging money for it". If that is not what you
| meant to ask, sorry!
|
| Anyway, if that is what you meant to ask: Well, I'm the author,
| so my answer may have _some_ substance (-:.
|
| I have a good job and it pays me to have impact. I can have
| much more impact by giving away the book to people interested
| in learning. [o]
|
| [o] This is not 100% true. Over the years, people have told me
| they value a book more if it costs something. I am not looking
| to please them.
|
| In particular, I grew up in India and we could not afford fancy
| (but great) Western textbooks. If there's a student like me
| right now (whether in India or Indiana) who wants to learn from
| my book but for whom its cost is an obstacle, that would make
| me very sad. That's why all the books I have (co-)authored have
| been available for free.
|
| On the first edition's site [https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publicati
| ons/Books/ProgLangs/2007-0...] you can see the different models
| by which I have made the book available. They have netted me
| some modest revenue. But there's always a free option.
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| I haven't read any of your books yet, but I can't overstate
| how much I respect your stance on pricing and impact. Thank
| you!
| UncleEntity wrote:
| I'd buy a paper edition if it were available to "support the
| cause".
|
| The last programming language book I bought the author got
| two sales because Amazon didn't follow the delivery notes
| where I specifically said don't leave it on the porch or it
| will get stolen and one of my sketchy neighbors got a free
| copy. Almost got a third sale as well but I happened to be
| home and tracking the delivery driver so managed to get it
| off my porch before the neighbors saw it.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| why not say sell it and give the money to something you like,
| like charity.
|
| Per the author's website ( https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/ ), he is a
| dedicated educator. Maybe he explicitly or implicitly intended
| the publication of this work under a Creative Commons license
| to be an exercise of charity (in the "love your neighbor"
| sense), kindness, goodness, and/or generosity.
| bawolff wrote:
| Imagine if he sold the book to raise money for a charity that
| publishes books for free.
| naasking wrote:
| > The question as normal here: why not say sell it and give the
| money to something you like, like charity.
|
| Giving away the book is a charitable donation to the entire
| software industry. That is giving his money away to something
| he likes.
| skrishnamurthi wrote:
| That's a lovely way to put it.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| At the end of the day, somebody needs to do the work in order
| to create good. Adding layers of transactions can only reduce,
| not increase efficiency.
|
| If you, a person who knows something, want to achieve a public
| good in educating others on that thing, then the most efficient
| way of achieving that is just spreading the knowledge yourself.
| If you sold your knowledge in a book, and then used the money
| to pay someone else to write a book teaching the same thing,
| and then distributed that for free, you can only have lost
| efficiency.
|
| It's like asking "Why should I pay for college instead of
| working to make money to pay someone else to go to college and
| then teach that information to me": It's absurd, because it
| introduces entirely unnecessary transactions.
| spdegabrielle wrote:
| [Programming Languages: Application and
| Interpretation](https://www.plai.org/)
|
| From the preface;
|
| > I have also written this book with working programmers in mind.
| Many of them may have not had a formal computer science
| education, or at least one that included a proper introduction to
| programming languages. At some point, like that 90% of students,
| some of them become curious about the media they use. I want this
| book to speak to them, gently drawing them away from the hustle
| and bustle of daily programming into a space of reflection and
| thought. - Shriram Krishnamurthi, Brown University
| lukeschwartz wrote:
| Never heard of Pyret[0] before. Looks good. This data-centric
| introduction to computing is also rather interesting [1].
|
| [0](https://www.pyret.org/) [1](https://www.dcic-world.org/)
| emmelaich wrote:
| Maintainer of the interesting language pyret.
| JonChesterfield wrote:
| Interesting in what sense? Language outline at
| https://www.pyret.org/docs/latest/A_Tour_of_Pyret.html
| zem wrote:
| one of the best thought-out syntaxes i have seen in a
| programming language, for one.
| jrvarela56 wrote:
| Ok maybe I'm a weird type, but I got really excited when
| the first thing they teach you is how to write a
| test/assertion.
| canadianfella wrote:
| I thought you were talking about this one.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_lang
| uag...
| skrishnamurthi wrote:
| To be accurate, Pyret is a collaboration (primarily) with Joe
| Politz and Ben Lerner and they deserve most of the credit for
| it.
| wallscratch wrote:
| Does anyone have suggestions with where to find more exercises? I
| notice the book pdf has like ~38 total, but was curious where one
| would find more.
| skrishnamurthi wrote:
| See https://cs.brown.edu/courses/csci1730/2022/assignments.html
| psuedobrain wrote:
| am i the only one for which programming language textbooks,
| papers, blog posts, etc. in racket are really hard to follow? the
| fact that the languages that is being operated on often looks
| exactly like racket makes it really hard to separate the two if i
| wanted to follow the tutorials in any other language.
| skrishnamurthi wrote:
| If you look at the book, you'll see that is not what it does,
| and for this reason.
| oxff wrote:
| I went through the previous version with Rust. It is almost
| entirely language agnostic. It could be in sign language.
| gavinray wrote:
| In case anyone has missed it, the author is in this thread and
| has replied to a great number of comments/questions.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=skrishnamurthi
| jalino23 wrote:
| this looks invaluable for self taught prog like me. anyone who
| read this before can share their experience?
| al-king wrote:
| lexi lambda of "Parse, Don't validate" fame has compared this
| favourably with SICP
| (https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/a/7481).
| ArcMex wrote:
| An incredible project. Your motivations resonate with me. Thanks
| for sharing.
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