What are some high-value books on (modern or historical) programming languages?

Question

I really enjoyed the recent series of lectures by Douglas Crockford , in particular the conversation on the history of programming languages. I would like to know more about this subject.

Consider this question an agnostic. I'm not interested in books that teach programming. I'm interested in books that discuss decisions made when developing one or more languages.

Answer 1

The following three are IMO required reading books for any langauges junky programming :)

• Oberon Nicklaus Wirth Project
• Terence Parr Language Implementation Templates
• Michael Scott's Pragmatics Programming Language

Answer 2

Every 15 years, ACM holds a conference on the History of Programming Languages (affectionately known as HoPL). Materials of exceptionally high quality and are available, unfortunately, only for a fee ACM. (However, if you access them from the IP address of a university, college, or school, you must have access to them.)

For HoPL-III (2007) , Guido van Rossum wanted to submit an article about Python, but he was not able to meet the requirements for viewing in time, so he published it in the form of a blog instead .

Several speakers also published their papers for free in addition to the official conference proceedings. In addition, several speakers again gave the same conversation elsewhere. For example, Guy L. Steele Jr. and Richard P. “Dick” Gabriel repeated their “ 50 out of 50 ” (which, as you can imagine, if you have ever seen a conversation between Guy Steele or Dick Gabriel, it’s not really conversation, rather, as musical art, crossed by a poetic helmet, meets Broadway), which presents 50 programming languages ​​with 50 words each.

Like the @Missing Faktor mentioned above, not only Project Oberon, but all Nicklaus Wirth’s languages ​​are extremely well documented: Algol-60, Algol-X, Algol-W, Pascal, Modula-2 and Oberon.

Answer 3

The structure and interpretation of computer programs. I have a copy, but now it is available online for free:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-ZH-4.html#%_toc_start

Answer 4

C ++ Design and Evolution

http://www2.research.att.com/~bs/dne.html

Answer 5

Programming language basics

Answer 6

The rationale for developing the Ada programming language:

http://www.amazon.com/Rationale-Design-Programming-Language-Companion/dp/0521392675

Although the book discusses the original version of the language, it still does an interesting reading. For each design decision, a rationale and discussion are included, both from the point of view of the programmer and the compiler developer.

Answer 7

The architecture of parallel programs, the late Per Brinch Hansen, includes a good overview of the design and rationale for its parallel language, Pascal, which added monitors (and other things) to its sequential Pascal, the correct subset of Pascal.

The big thing missing from Sequential Pascal is the pointer. However, given the limitations intended for placement in Sequential Pascal programs, all you can do is use a pointer that you can also do with the index of the array, and in a more secure way, “safe” in the sense that this is not possible (and checked by the compiler!) do illegal things.