This is up there with The Art of Computer Programming for me as a text that has clearly been painstakingly crafted by its author. It shares as well with TAOCP that it is simultaneously so many things: an introduction to programming language semantics, an introduction to category theory, (in later chapters) a reference on pretty sophisticated programming language semantics, and an exploration of the rich connections between all of these topics. I owe huge chunks of my bachelor's thesis [1] to Paul and I eagerly look forward to returning to his text after my retirement from software engineering :)
This book is for you if:
- You have some exposure to PL semantics (lambda calculus, functional programming) in the operational tradition.
- You have some background in abstract algebra and/or category theory.
- You have neither but you're interested and willing to grind.
A word on the title: the contents are practical for doing mathematics; if you're interested in studying lambda calculi and want fancy techniques for writing light, elegant proofs about their properties, this is a great resource. If you're into building systems it may not be as useful to you.
This book is for you if:
A word on the title: the contents are practical for doing mathematics; if you're interested in studying lambda calculi and want fancy techniques for writing light, elegant proofs about their properties, this is a great resource. If you're into building systems it may not be as useful to you.[1] https://github.com/jaykru/thesis/blob/trunk/thesis.pdf