Foundations of Programming Languages

"Foundations of Programming Languages" presents topics relating to the design and implementation of programming languages as fundamental skills that all computer scientists should possess. Rather than provide a feature-by-feature examination of programming languages, the author discusses programming languages organized by concepts. The first five chapters provide students with a successful foundation for the study of programming languages. This includes topics such as the data structures, expression notations, and abstraction in chapters 2 and 3. Later, metalanguages are introduced for the formal specification of the syntax and semantics of computer programming languages. This material is presented in a manner that allows one to customize the coverage based on course need. Seyed Roosta also teaches paradigm-specific topics with special care, dedicating two full chapters to each paradigm. The first focuses on the specifications of paradigm, including an emphasis on abstraction principles to help students understand the motivation behind certain design issues. The second chapter discusses the implementation issues related to the paradigm, including the use of popular programming languages to help students comprehend the relationship to the design issues discusses earlier. Paradigms discussed include the imperative, object-oriented, logic, functional, and parallel. The book concludes with new paradigms of interest today, including Data Flow, Database, Network, Internet, and Windows programming.