[plt-scheme] Re: 2 books

On Friday 11 December 2009, keydana at gmx.de wrote:
> the "one eyed man" thread reminded me of a question I'd wanted to ask
>  for some time - I'd very much like to know your  opinions on two
>  books which I thought might be "authoritative", but have not yet
>  seen mentioned on this list (well, I could have missed it of
>  course):
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Design-Concepts-Programming-Languages-Franklyn/
> dp/0262201755/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books-intl-de&qid=12605427
> 75&sr=8-1
> 
> and
> 
> http://www.amazon.com/Concepts-Techniques-Models-Computer-Programming
> /dp/0262220695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books-intl-de&qid=1260542
> 477&sr=8-1
> 
> 
> I've bought both of them, but have not touched the second yet
>  (because this would take quite some time to read). Regarding the
>  first one, I read the first 200 pages or so but had problems
>  understanding, so I decided to read PLAI first and perhaps come back
>  to it later.

I haven't read PLAI (yet) so I can't compare it to the DCPL, which I 
read over the course of 3 or 4 months. I'm still not done with it by any 
measure. In general, I consider it very well-written, however, that 
doesn't make the subject matter itself much easier. Perhaps you just 
need to allow for a slower pace. Myself, I'm taking a detour now over 
Pierce's Types and Programming Languages (very slowly, due to time 
constraints) and will probably get back to parts of DCPL some time in 
the future.

As for for Van Roy's CTM, I read that early this year, and while 
interesting, it is no latter day SICP. CTM is much more formal (which is 
not bad in itself) and much less fun. Consider Michael Scott's 
Programming Language Pragmatics for a view of similar issues from a very 
different angle.

Michael

-- 
Michael Schuerig
mailto:michael at schuerig.de
http://www.schuerig.de/michael/