3 Books On Programming Languages

If you are interested in creating a Domain Specific Language, the following books may be of help.

First there are R.D. Tennet’s “Principles of Programming Languages” and Michael Scott’s “Programming Language Pragmatics.”

The former work was published in 1981, its content is still highly relevant and it is frequently cited in today’s discussions of the implementation of Java closures. The latter book focuses on pragmatics, which are the implementation aspects of a language. It discusses such topics as data type selection, object lifetimes and parameter processing.

Then there’s the just-released “Design Concepts in Programming Languages,” by F. Turbak and D. Gifford.

The book is comprehensive and presents numerous little languages to illustrate key concepts. The material is dense and relies heavily on mathematical explanations, formal logic and Lisp-like language examples; in other words, it has a strongly academic feel. Readers who use it as a reference volume can skip the math and symbols without much loss.