Semantics with applications
by Hanne Riis Nielson, Flemming Nielson · first published 2007
71% recommend29% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Compact introduction to formal semantics for programming languages, covering operational, denotational and other approaches. It serves as a foundation for compiler and program analysis work.
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I also highly recommend "Semantics with Applications" by Nielson and Nielson. I read it this January and it is an excellent book. It is very approachable for someone with only the lightest background in formal methods. If you are looking for a good introduction…
on “Denotational Semantics: A Methodology for Language Development [pdf]” ↗…"Partial Evaluation and Automatic Program Generation." Jones, Gomard and Sestoft. Freely available online somewhere. If you wanna dip into semantics, there is no better text than Nielson and Nielson "Semantics with Applications", also online on the authors' website. The undergraduate "appetizer" edition is new and I can't vouch for it, but the older one is a gem of a tiny little book. This text introduces all major three semantic…
on “Lazy Partial Evaluation” ↗…Anderson The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages. Glynn Wynskell. Communicating Sequential Processes. Tony Hoare. This book is surprising in its compactness and lucidity. Pi Calculus. Robin Milner. Semantics With Applications. Hanne Riis Nielson On Concurrent Programming. Fred Schneider. Specifying Systems with TLA+. Leslie Lamport. Distributed Algorithms. Nancy Lynch. Reliable Distributed Computing. Ken Birman and Robert…
on “Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (1996) [pdf]” ↗…Concrete Semantics by Nipkow and Klein http://concrete-semantics.org/, which is also an introduction to the Isabelle/HOL proof assistant and formalizes all of the PL content in Isabelle There's also: * Semantics with Applications: An Appetizer by Nielson and Nielson https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781846286919, apparently a newer edition of an older book I liked and which used to be available as a free PDF, but the link from…
on “Principles of Programming Languages (1997) [pdf]” ↗…Quinnec's Lisp in Small Pieces is the most important work, but you will need a good foundation in denotational semantics (you can get by with the one chapter in the little book by Nielson and Nielson, "Semantics with Applications: A Formal Introduction". Somewhere in there you will brush against various compilation methods and IRs for the lambda calculus, most importantly continuation passing style. Most semantics text introduce…
on “ACM 20 Most Influential Papers on Programming Languages [tarball]” ↗I usually reference a combination of: Dragon Book, Muchnicks: Advanced Compiler Design, and Semantics with Applications. I have been meaning to pick up a copy of Engineering a Compiler. (I should also note I am currently reading: Principles of Program Analysis, it is a good book focusing on just theory. Read Semantics…
on “C++ Grandmaster Certification” ↗…do. SQL is not simple. Just the parser for PostgreSQL's dialect was around 1500 lines of code, last I checked. Although, if you did a small subset, maybe it wouldn't be so bad. I really like the book Semantics with Applications which discusses the meaning of different programming languages. When I was starting out, it seemed to me like there was a lot riding on the syntactic differences between languages like C and Pascal. Now…
on “Ask HN: What's a starting point for learning how to write programming languages?” ↗I'll look into it, thanks! Branching off the links that fadmmatt posted above, I found a booklist (http://matt.might.net/articles/books-papers-materials-for-gr...) with a PDF of Nielson & Nielson's Semantics with Applications (http://www.daimi.au.dk/~bra8130/Wiley_book/wiley.pdf). That looks good, too. It sounds like I'm used to reading operational semantics, but have usually seen them specified in S-Expressions (as mini-interpreters…
on “What are the semantics of your favourite programming language?” ↗…SICP and EOPL, but I found the chapter in Lisp in Small Pieces on denotational semantics almost incomprehensible, even though the later chapters on compilation were tremendous fun. I did take a stab at Semantics with Applications but couldn't quite get through it, although I probably didn't go after it with the gusto I should have. Since then I've been getting into some more traditional compiler stuff (Appel's Modern Compiler…
on “Ask HN: Favorite HN threads of all time” ↗