Concise Introduction to Computer Language : Design, Experimentation and Paradigms

Daniel Cooke's new text provides an innovative approach that makes the teaching of methods and mathematical tools employed in designing a language accessible to students. Although many professors find this material to be important, some limit the coverage of language design topics as a result of students' struggles with mathematics. The author covers material on language syntax, language semantics, and language translation in the first half of the book, while relying on the mathematics students have learned in their previous classes. He continues to draw on this material throughout the book as needed - after students have received the background they need in the formal underpinnings of all languages. The author presents paradigms and languages in the context of language design. For instance, in Chapter 5 he introduces imperative and procedural programming as the foundations of other languages, along with input/output, if and else statements, loop statements, and arithmetics. As new paradigms are introduced, he revisits these basic constructs and discusses the decisions to add, modify, and/or delete them based on the problem solving abstraction. As a result, students are better able to grasp new languages by understanding their unique features as well as features shared with other languages.