Rating: 
Summary: Essentials of programming languages
Review: about book catalogue and conten
Rating: 
Summary: Worst Book In My University Career
Review: Don't buy this book. It's a complete waste of time and money. Nothing is explained clearly or concisely. The chapter on interpreters is especially incomprehensible. Any other book on Scheme is better than this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Essential but insufficient
Review: For better or for worse, this book is probably the best general "hands-on" introduction to programming language concepts, showing students how to write interpreters for a variety of programming-language paradigms. It covers what many computer scientists consider the most important ones: functional programming, object-oriented programming, type systems/inference, and logic programming (though it gives short shrift to the latter).Teachers love the book because it takes a unified, minimalist approach, using the simple, elegant language Scheme. Students seem to hate the book for the same reason, complaining that the details of Scheme divert attention from the concepts themselves. This situation makes it essential to supplement the book with programming assignments in actual languages (Java, ML, Prolog), so students can see what all the trouble is for, and what's really exciting about the ideas in the book. Otherwise, reading this book is like learning how to build a car without ever having seen one!
Rating:
Summary: excellent
Review: I had a lot of fun going through the book and following the steps to build an increasingly sophisticated language interpreter.
Now if only I can get a job writing scheme/lisp code, I'll be all set.
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Summary: Be sure to have your dictionary on hand while reading...
Review: I honestly don't understand why professors choose this book to teach programming language concepts/semantics. The best books to learn from are written in simple, easy to read language, and with a well-designed index. EOPL lacks both of these attributes. As a part of the class we had to take reading quizzes on each section, meaning we had to read this book cover to cover. Friedman used complex, difficult to understand language to teach concepts that themselves were difficult to grasp. To make matters worse, the professor simply read from the book during lecture, failing to clarify the mysteries created by Friedman. An optional book for the class was Programming Language Pragmatics. It explained the implementations of Object Oriented languages, type checking, assembly, etc. using multiple languages people have used before, unlike scheme. I would suggest looking at that book before choosing EOPL.
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyed the Class, Didn't care for the Textbook
Review: I took Friedman's undergraduate Programming Languages course at Indiana University and though this book was the required text
Friedman used it sparingly, as did I. It's full of formal programming language theory and enough EBNF grammars to satisfy the purist while confusing the practioner. To Friedman's credit, he is realistic about the book's audience (graduate,doctoral, and post-doctoral) and about the prevalence of Scheme outside of academia. The chapters on continuations and object oriented programming, however, are quite accessible and interesting reading. Though he doesn't do it much in the book, Friedman decoupled the course from Scheme several times and we examined everything from C's setjmp, longjmp mechanisms to C++'s virtual method lookup implementation. Word of advice to those taking a course taught by Friedman: Don't miss a single lecture or you will be hopelessly lost.
Buy this book if you are interested in formal programming language theory. Don't buy this book if you are interested in learning a specific language or are put off by a dense, rigorous approach to learning programming languages. In any event, best
of luck with your studies.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: I used this book in university and studied under Professor Friedman. This book perfect encapsulates the content of our course. In addition, it makes understanding the structure of programming languages easy.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: I used this book in university and studied under Professor Friedman. This book perfect encapsulates the content of our course. In addition, it makes understanding the structure of programming languages easy.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Programming Language Text
Review: I've used this book to teach an undergraduate programming language for 4 years now. I believe it to be the finest text in the area because of its approach to the subject. Many books in this area are what I call smorgasborg books--leading the reader through one language syntax after another without ever getting to what really matters: programming language operation. In EoPL, Freidman, Wand, and Haynes solve this problem by using a standard technique of computer science: using the right langauge for the job. In this case the job is progrmaming language operation and the language is Scheme. Don't be fooled into thinking you're learning Scheme--you're actually learning a great deal about programming languages along the way. The book covers the operational semantics of the most important features in programming languages and give users a clear understanding of the infrastructure of programming langauges along the way. Highly recommended. See http://lal.cs.byu.edu/cs330 for a course based on this book.
Rating:
Summary: Essential but insufficient
Review: The author of this book seems to have purposefully obfuscated every paragraph in this book. I had a course in Program Organization a couple semesters ago and this was the textbook for the class. I "read" the first few chapters, then gave up. I was tired of having to re-read every, and I mean every, sentence of the book multiple times in order to understand the topics covered.
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