PLP 3e cover

Preface to
Programming Language Pragmatics
Third Edition

A course in computer programming provides the typical student’s first exposure to the field of computer science.  Most students in such a course will have used computers all their lives, for email, games, web browsing, word processing, social networking, and a host of other tasks, but it is not until they write their first programs that they begin to appreciate how applications work.  After gaining a certain level of facility as programmers (presumably with the help of a good course in data structures and algorithms), the natural next step is to wonder how programming languages work.  This book provides an explanation.  It aims, quite simply, to be the most comprehensive and accurate languages text available, in a style that is engaging and accessible to the typical undergraduate.  This aim reflects my conviction that students will understand more, and enjoy the material more, if we explain what is really going on. 

In the conventional “systems” curriculum, the material beyond data structures (and possibly computer organization) tends to be compartmentalized into a host of separate subjects, including programming languages, compiler construction, computer architecture, operating systems, networks, parallel and distributed computing, database management systems, and possibly software engineering, object-oriented design, graphics, or user interface systems.  One problem with this compartmentalization is that the list of subjects keeps growing, but the number of semesters in a Bachelor’s program does not.  More important, perhaps, many of the most interesting discoveries in computer science occur at the boundaries between subjects.  The RISC revolution, for example, forged an alliance between computer architecture and compiler construction that has endured for 25 years.  More recently, renewed interest in virtual machines has blurred the boundaries between the operating system kernel, the compiler, and the language run-time system.  Programs are now routinely embedded in web pages, spreadsheets, and user interfaces.  And with the rise of multicore processors, concurrency issues that used to be an issue only for systems programmers have begun to impact everyday computing. 

Increasingly, both educators and practitioners are recognizing the need to emphasize these sorts of interactions.  Within higher education in particular there is a growing trend toward integration in the core curriculum.  Rather than give the typical student an in-depth look at two or three narrow subjects, leaving holes in all the others, many schools have revised the programming languages and computer organization courses to cover a wider range of topics, with follow-on electives in various specializations.  This trend is very much in keeping with the findings of the ACM/IEEE-CS Computing Curricula 2001 task force, which emphasize the growth of the field, the increasing need for breadth, the importance of flexibility in curricular design, and the overriding goal of graduating students who “have a system-level perspective, appreciate the interplay between theory and practice, are familiar with common themes, and can adapt over time as the field evolves” [Sec. 11.1, adapted]. 

The first two editions of Programming Language Pragmatics (PLP-1e and -2e) had the good fortune of riding this curricular trend.  This third edition continues and strengthens the emphasis on integrated learning while retaining a central focus on programming language design. 

At its core, PLP is a book about how programming languages work.  Rather than enumerate the details of many different languages, it focuses on concepts that underlie all the languages the student is likely to encounter, illustrating those concepts with a variety of concrete examples, and exploring the tradeoffs that explain why different languages were designed in different ways.  Similarly, rather than explain how to build a compiler or interpreter (a task few programmers will undertake in its entirety), PLP focuses on what a compiler does to an input program, and why.  Language design and implementation are thus explored together, with an emphasis on the ways in which they interact. 

Changes in the Third Edition

In comparison to the second edition, PLP-3e provides

  1. A new chapter on virtual machines and run-time program management
  2. A major revision of the chapter on concurrency
  3. Numerous other reflections of recent changes in the field
  4. Improvements inspired by instructor feedback or a fresh consideration of familiar topics

Item 1 in this list is perhaps the most visible change.  It reflects the increasingly ubiquitous use of both managed code and scripting languages.  Chapter 15 begins with a general overview of virtual machines and then takes a detailed look at the two most widely used examples  the JVM and the CLI.  The chapter also covers dynamic compilation, binary translation, reflection, debuggers, profilers, and other aspects of the increasingly sophisticated run-time machinery found in modern language systems. 

Item 2 also reflects the evolving nature of the field.  With the proliferation of multicore processors, concurrent languages have become increasingly important to mainstream programmers, and the field is very much in flux.  Changes to Chapter 12 (Concurrency) include new sections on nonblocking synchronization, memory consistency models, and software transactional memory, as well as increased coverage of OpenMP, Erlang, Java 5, and Parallel FX for .NET. 

Other new material (Item 3) appears throughout the text.  Section 5.4.4 covers the multicore revolution from an architectural perspective.  Section 8.7 covers event handling, in both sequential and concurrent languages.  In Section 14.2, coverage of gcc internals includes not only RTL, but also the newer GENERIC and Gimple intermediate forms.  References have been updated throughout to accommodate such recent developments as Java 6, C++ ’0X, C# 3.0, F#, Fortran 2003, Perl 6, and Scheme R6RS. 

Finally, Item 4 encompasses improvements to almost every section of the text.  Topics receiving particularly heavy updates include the running example of Chapter 1 (moved from Pascal/MIPS to C/x86); bootstrapping (Section 1.4); scanning (Section 2.2); table-driven parsing (Sections 2.3.2 and 2.3.3); closures (Sections 3.6.2, 3.6.3, 8.3.1, 8.4.4, 8.7.2, and 9.2.3); macros (Section 3.7); evaluation order and strictness (Sections 6.6.2 and 10.4); decimal types (Section 7.1.4); array shape and allocation (Section 7.4.2); parameter passing (Section 8.3); inner (nested) classes (Section 9.2.3); monads (Section 10.4.2); and the Prolog examples of Chapter 11 (now ISO conformant). 

To accommodate new material, coverage of some topics has been condensed.  Examples include modules (Chapters 3 and 9), loop control (Chapter 6), packed types (Chapter 7), the Smalltalk class hierarchy (Chapter 9), metacircular interpretation (Chapter 10), interconnection networks (Chapter 12), and thread creation syntax (also Chapter 12).  Additional material has moved to the companion web site (formerly packaged on an included CD, and still indicated with a CD icon).  This includes all of Chapter 5 (Target Machine Architecture), unions (Section 7.3.4), dangling references (Section 7.7.2), message passing (Section 12.5), and XSLT (Section 13.3.5).  Throughout the text, examples drawn from languages no longer in widespread use have been replaced with more recent equivalents wherever appropriate. 

Overall, the printed text has grown by only some 30 pages, but there are nearly 100 new pages on the companion site.  There are also 14 more “Design & Implementation” sidebars, more than 70 new numbered examples, a comparable number of new “Check Your Understanding” questions, and more than 60 new end-of-chapter exercises and explorations.  Considerable effort has been invested in creating a consistent and comprehensive index.  As in earlier editions, Morgan Kaufmann has maintained its commitment to providing definitive texts at reasonable cost  PLP-3e is less expensive than competing alternatives, but larger and more comprehensive. 

The Companion Web Site

To minimize the physical size of the text, make way for new material, and allow students to focus on the fundamentals when browsing, approximately 350 pages of more advanced or peripheral material appears on the companion site.  Each companion section is represented in the main text by a brief introduction to the subject and an “In More Depth” paragraph that summarizes the elided material. 

Note that placement of material on the companion site does not constitute a judgment about its technical importance.  It simply reflects the fact that there is more material worth covering than will fit in a single volume or a single semester course.  Since preferences and syllabi vary, most instructors will probably want to assign reading from the companion site, and most will refrain from assigning certain sections of the printed text.  My intent has been to retain in print the material that is likely to be covered in the largest number of courses. 

Also contained on the companion site are compilable copies of all significant code fragments found in the text (in more than two dozen languages), an extensive search facility, and pointers to on-line resources. 

Design & Implementation Sidebars

Like its predecessors, PLP-3e places heavy emphasis on the ways in which language design constrains implementation options, and the ways in which anticipated implementations have influenced language design.  Many of these connections and interactions are highlighted in some 135 “Design & Implementation” sidebars.  A more detailed introduction to these sidebars appears in Chapter 1.  A numbered list appears in Appendix B. 

Numbered and Titled Examples

Examples in PLP-3e are intimately woven into the flow of the presentation.  To make it easier to find specific examples, to remember their content, and to refer to them in other contexts, a number and a title for each is displayed in a marginal note.  There are nearly 1000 such examples across the main text and the companion site.  A detailed list appears in Appendix C. 

Exercise Plan

Review questions appear throughout the text at roughly 10-page intervals, at the ends of major sections.  These are based directly on the preceding material, and have short, straightforward answers. 

More detailed questions appear at the end of each chapter.  These are divided into Exercises and Explorations.  The former are generally more challenging than the per-section review questions, and should be suitable for homework or brief projects.  The latter are more open-ended, requiring web or library research, substantial time commitment, or the development of subjective opinion.  Solutions to many of the exercises (but not the explorations) are available to registered instructors from a password-protected web site;  visit textbooks.elsevier.com/web/9780123745149

How to Use the Book

Programming Language Pragmatics covers almost all of the material in the PL “knowledge units” of the Computing Curricula 2001 report.  The book is an ideal fit for the CS 341 model course (Programming Language Design), and can also be used for CS 340 (Compiler Construction) or CS 343 (Programming Paradigms).  It contains a significant fraction of the content of CS 344 (Functional Programming) and CS 346 (Scripting Languages).  Figure 1 illustrates several possible paths through the text. 

Chart of paths through the text

Figure 1  Paths through the text. Darker shaded regions indicate supplemental “In More Depth” sections on the companion site.  Section numbers are shown for breaks that do not correspond to supplemental material. 

For self-study, or for a full-year course (track F in Figure 1), I recommend working through the book from start to finish, turning to the companion site as each “In More Depth” section is encountered.  The one-semester course at the University of Rochester (track R), for which the text was originally developed, also covers most of the book, but leaves out most of the companion sections, as well as bottom-up parsing (2.3.3) and the second halves of Chapters 14 (Building a Runnable Program) and 15 (Run-time Program Management). 

Some chapters (1, 4, 5, 14, 15, 16) have a heavier emphasis than others on implementation issues.  These can be reordered to a certain extent with respect to the more design-oriented chapters.  Many students will already be familiar with much of the material in Chapter 5, most likely from a course on computer organization; hence the placement of the chapter on the companion site.  Some students may also be familiar with some of the material in Chapter 2, perhaps from a course on automata theory.  Much of this chapter can then be read quickly as well, pausing perhaps to dwell on such practical issues as recovery from syntax errors, or the ways in which a scanner differs from a classical finite automaton. 

A traditional programming languages course (track P in Figure 1) might leave out all of scanning and parsing, plus all of Chapter 4.  It would also de-emphasize the more implementation-oriented material throughout.  In place of these it could add such design-oriented companion sections as the ML type system (7.2.4), multiple inheritance (9.5), Smalltalk (9.6.1), lambda calculus (10.6), and predicate calculus (11.3). 

PLP has also been used at some schools for an introductory compiler course (track C in Figure 1).  The typical syllabus leaves out most of Part III (Chapters 10 through 13), and de-emphasizes the more design-oriented material throughout.  In place of these it includes all of scanning and parsing, Chapters 14 through 16, and a slightly different mix of other companion sections. 

For a school on the quarter system, an appealing option is to offer an introductory one-quarter course and two optional follow-on courses (track Q in Figure 1).  The introductory quarter might cover the main (non-companion) sections of Chapters 1, 3, 6, and 7, plus the first halves of Chapters 2 and 8.  A language-oriented follow-on quarter might cover the rest of Chapter 8, all of Part III, companion sections from Chapters 6 through 8, and possibly supplemental material on formal semantics, type systems, or other related topics.  A compiler-oriented follow-on quarter might cover the rest of Chapter 2; Chapters 4 to 5 and 14 to 16, companion sections from Chapters 3 and 8 to 9, and possibly supplemental material on automatic code generation, aggressive code improvement, programming tools, and so on. 

Whatever the path through the text, I assume that the typical reader has already acquired significant experience with at least one imperative language.  Exactly which language it is shouldn’t matter.  Examples are drawn from a wide variety of languages, but always with enough comments and other discussion that readers without prior experience should be able to understand easily.  Single-paragraph introductions to more than 50 different languages appear in Appendix A.  Algorithms, when needed, are presented in an informal pseudocode that should be self-explanatory.  Real programming language code is set in "typewriter" font.  Pseudocode is set in a sans-serif font

Supplemental Materials

In addition to supplemental sections, the companion site contains a variety of other resources, including

Additional resources are available at textbooks.elsevier.com/web/9780123745149 (you may wish to check back from time to time).  For instructors who have adopted the text, a password-protected page provides access to

Acknowledgments for the Third Edition

In preparing the third edition I have been blessed with the generous assistance of a very large number of people.  Many provided errata or other feedback on the second edition, among them Gerald Baumgartner, Manuel E. Bermudez, William Calhoun, Betty Cheng, Yi Dai, Eileen Head, Nathan Hoot, Peter Ketcham, Antonio Leitao, Jingke Li, Annie Liu, Dan Mullowney, Arthur Nunes-Harwitt, Zongyan Qiu, Beverly Sanders, David Sattari, Parag Tamhankar, Ray Toal, Robert van Engelen, Garrett Wollman, and Jingguo Yao.  In several cases, good advice from the 2004 class test went unheeded in the second edition due to lack of time; I am glad to finally have the chance to incorporate it here.  I also remain indebted to the many individuals acknowledged in the first and second editions, and to the reviewers, adopters, and readers who made those editions a success. 

External reviewers for the third edition provided a wealth of useful suggestions; my thanks to Perry Alexander (University of Kansas), Hans Boehm (HP Labs), Stephen Edwards (Columbia University), Tim Harris (Microsoft Research), Eileen Head (Binghamton University), Doug Lea (SUNY Oswego), Jan-Willem Maessen (Sun Microsystems Laboratories), Maged Michael (IBM Research), Beverly Sanders (University of Florida), Christopher Vickery (Queens College, City University of New York), and Garrett Wollman (MIT).  Hans, Doug, and Maged proofread parts of Chapter 12 on very short notice; Tim and Jan were equally helpful with parts of Chapter 10.  Mike Spear helped vet the transactional memory implementation of Figure 12.18.  Xiao Zhang provided pointers for Section 15.3.3.  Problems that remain in all these sections are entirely my own. 

In preparing the third edition, I have drawn on 20 years of experience teaching this material to upper-level undergraduates at the University of Rochester.  I am grateful to all my students for their enthusiasm and feedback.  My thanks as well to my colleagues and graduate students, and to the department’s administrative, secretarial, and technical staff for providing such a supportive and productive work environment.  Finally, my thanks to Barbara Ryder, whose forthright comments on the first edition helped set me on the path to the second; I am honored to have her as the author of the Foreword. 

As they were on previous editions, the staff at Morgan Kaufmann have been a genuine pleasure to work with, on both a professional and a personal level.  My thanks in particular to Nate McFadden, Senior Development Editor, who shepherded both this and the previous edition with unfailing patience, good humor, and a fine eye for detail; to Marilyn Rash, who managed the book’s production; and to Denise Penrose, whose gracious stewardship, first as Editor and then as Publisher, have had a lasting impact. 

Most important, I am indebted to my wife, Kelly, and our daughters, Erin and Shannon, for their patience and support through endless months of writing and revising.  Computing is a fine profession, but family is what really matters. 

Michael L. Scott      
Rochester, NY      
December 2008      


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