Constraint-Based Grammar Formalisms: Parsing and Type Inference for Natural and Computer Languages Review

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Constraint-Based Grammar Formalisms: Parsing and Type Inference for Natural and Computer Languages ReviewI remember when I saw this book in the bookstore (back in the days when "bookstore" meant a physical place). I was torn -- I already owned a copy of the thesis; should I pay good money for a book that might turn out to be just a reprinting of the thesis with a nicer cover? I tried to determine how much was new, but in the end I thought "there's probably only a few hundred people in the world who are really interested in this topic; if I don't buy it, who will?" I'm glad I did buy it; ten years later I still remember the point about the boundary between syntax and semantics being a fluid one; one that computational linguists draw in a different place than programming language designers. The rest of the book is also worth reading, whether or not you've read the thesis.Constraint-Based Grammar Formalisms: Parsing and Type Inference for Natural and Computer Languages OverviewConstraint-based theories of grammar and grammar formalisms are becoming an increasingly widespread area of research in computational linguistics. Constraint-Based Grammar Formalisms provides the first rigorous mathematical and computational basis for this important area. It introduces new applications to both natural and computer languages and brings together Stuart Shieber's many contributions that have been at the core of developments ranging from the discovery of improved explanations of linguistic phenomena such as binding and coordination to the detailed mathematical analysis of constraint-solving and parsing in a variety of grammar formalisms.This thorough examination of the theoretical and computational foundations of constraint-based grammars and applications to natural-language analysis is unique in several respects. Shieber's theoretical framework may be applied to a whole class of formalisms with properties that make it possible to define a general parsing algorithm for all members of the class, with results that provide essential guidance to the implementer of constraint-based language processing systems. Shieber also brings out new connections between grammatical categories and data types, and between constraint-based natural-language analysis and type inference in computer languages. These connections should be of increasing interest both to computational and theoretical linguists and to computer scientists.

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CIL Programming: Under the Hood of .NET Review

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CIL Programming: Under the Hood of .NET ReviewHas this ever happened to you... There's this new technology or programming language that you're dying to learn, but there are no books. Finally, someone writes a book, you get the book from the bookseller (Amazon), you open the book, and you thumb through the pages. Well, that's the way I felt about learning Microsoft IL for .NET. I really was keen about learning .NET's "assembly language" because throughout my career I found that having low level knowledge about how a system is put together is very, very useful. Now, I'm not suggesting that you stop everything you're doing and run out to learn CIL programming. However, I believe that if you want to be a serious .NET professional, learning CIL should definitely be on your To-Do list.
So what about Bock's Book: "CIL Programming: Under the Hood of .NET"? In a word - disappointing. Bock spends most of the book's first chapter entitled "Language Interoperability" on detailed discussion of programs written in a variety of languages. He's trying to make the point that the CLR allows programs written in different languages to freely interoperate. Duh? Why spend the better part of the book's opening talking about everything but CIL. There's even an Oberon (?) programming sample here.
The second and third chapters on ILASM Directives, and, CIL Opcodes, respectively, read like my weekend shopping lists. While it is true that programming books have to regurgitate all the nasty details of the programming language, the good books tell its readers how to internalize the information and describe useful ways of summarizing the information in one's mind. That is, the authors of the better books have figured out some rhyme and reason to the language and they share these insights with their readers. On the other hand, this is what I found in these two most important chapters of Bock's book: the more I read, the more questions I had. I wound up spending significant time on the NET trying to resolve questions that were raised in the material in these two chapters. Clearly, the author did not anticipate these questions.
The fourth chapter, "ILASM and CIL in Practice" is a decent discussion of a typical sample program in IL. It demonstrates some of the IL constructs and programming concerns discussed in the previous chapters.
Chapter 6 is interesting. Here the author talks about and contrasts the IL generated by various programming languages. Some of the VB.NET and C# exposés were eye-opening, but then Bock goes back to Oberon again.
The author ends off the book in chapters 7 and 8 with some very long and tedious samples. I got nothing from this. Chapter 9, the last in the book, is a two-pager on "CIL Tips".
So why do I give this book 3 stars?
1) The book includes Chapter 5, a well-written and interesting discussion about CIL Debugging.
2) Right now, Bock's book is one of three books that talk about CIL. It is the only book that is targeted directly at programming. Although John Gough's "Compiling for the .NET Common Language Runtime" is an excellent book, it is very specialized and targets would-be compiler authors. I didn't read the third book in the IL arena, Serge Lidin's "Inside Microsoft .NET IL Assembler", but I did thumb through it several times (you know what little that is worth): this book strikes me as being very difficult.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
If you need to learn IL Programming right now, buy Bock's book - read the second half of chapter 1, and read Chapters 2-5, maybe Chapter 6. If you have the time, money, and inclination, then buy and read Gough's book. You'll need a lot of time for Gough, but you will definitely learn.
If learning IL is not that pressing right now, I would wait to see if someone else releases a better book.CIL Programming: Under the Hood of .NET OverviewFor the most part, .NET developers use a high-level language, such as C# or VB .NET, to develop their systems. However, the core language of .NET is the Common Intermediate Language, or CIL. This language is the language of .NETdevelopers can use CIL to do whatever is allowed by the .NET specifications, which is not the case for C# and VB .NET. Although it is unlikely that the majority of .NET developers will create their assemblies in CIL, understanding how CIL works will give them a deep, language-independent insight into the core parts of .NET. Furthermore, such knowledge is essential for creating dynamic types, a powerful part of the .NET Framework.In CIL Programming: Under the Hood of .NET, Jason Bock covers the essentials of programming the CIL. First, Bock discusses the basics of what .NET assemblies are and how manifests fit into the picture. He then shows how to create assemblies in .NETincluding the ilasm directives and CIL opcodes, and how these are used to define assemblies, classes, field, methods, and method definitions. Bock also covers how C# and VB .NET and other non-MS languages emit CIL and how they differ. Finally, he reveals how developers can create dynamic assemblies at runtime via the Emitter classes.After reading CIL Programming: Under the Hood of .NET, developers will have a better understanding of the CIL and how to program directly into it. A must-have on every .NET developers desk!Jason Bock is consultant and instructor for Intertech-Inc. (a company devoted to delivering hands-on workshops for enterprise web developers and whose focus is the professional Java, XML, and .NET enterprise developer).He has worked on a number of business applications using a diverse set of substrates and languages such as C#, .NET, and Java. He is the author of ".NET Security" by Apress, and "Visual Basic 6 Win32 API Tutorial, and has written numerous articles on technical development issues associated with both VB and Java.Jason holds a B.A. and a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from Marquette University.You can find out more about him at http://www.jasonbock.net

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Engineering a Compiler, Second Edition Review

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Engineering a Compiler, Second Edition ReviewThis is really a super compiler text. It is also one of the most recent compiler books you can buy.
First of all this is a theoretical book. If you read the title 'Engineering a compiler' as 'Coding/Building a compiler' you would be disappointed! So, if you're looking for a learing-by-coding book, this is not for you (but I have some recommendations at the end of this review in the latest paragraph). The difference with most of the other theoretical books is that this book is not a dry text. It has also a nice layout. It gives plenty of examples, and all topics are well connected to each other. It's a pleasure to read for not native English people, so native English people can read it pretty fast.
This book read like a novel.. It does contain enough diagrams, tables, etc. but not too much (crowded), and everything is well explained.
You can read this book as a compiler introduction book. But I can only recommend this to B.Sc/M.Sc Computer Science students (like me). You don't need to have a M.Sc in Mathematics to understand this text, (all the math, eg. liveness graphs are well explained), but you will understand everything better if you have some background in algorithms (design), pseudocode, etc. like you gained during your B.Sc program. People without formal computer science education I would recommend to read a practical book first (see at the end of this review), because you may find else this text too theoretical.
This book focus on code optimizations. According to the authors (and me) compiler front ends (scanning/parsing/etc) are commodities today, and the backend (codegeneration) is where the difference is made nowadays. So if you're looking for a introduction text into compiler optimization this book is for you!
If you're looking for a more practical book I advice you to read 'Programming Language Processors in Java' from Watt & Brown. In that book you learn to build a nice stack virtual machine in Java with 'advanced features' like records (structs), procedures/functions, arrays and so on. That book is a good companion for 'Engineering a Compiler' to give you some practical insight. If you're looking for a Language Design book I advice you to look at 'Programming Language Pragmatics'. Both books are worth the money...Engineering a Compiler, Second Edition Overview

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Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management Review

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Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management ReviewGarbage collection is a very interesting and complicated topic. To understand different garbage collection algorithms, one has to go through various research papers published over last 30 years or read the simplified descriptions presented in Java site and Bill Venners artima.com. This book does an excellent job in putting together all these algorithms in a logical order that gives us a chance to understand the different challenges sceintists and programming language authors faced and how the algorithms evolved over the time. The book starts with basic overview and history of commonly known algorithms: Reference counting, Mark and Sweep, and Copying algorithms. It then elaborates each of these algorithms, enumerates their pros and cons, and presents imporvements done by different researchers. After this, the book moves on to advanced algorithms like Generational algorithm and concurrent mark and sweep algorithm. I recommend this book to anyone interested in garbage collection. I haven't seen any other book on this topic. Even for programmers who mostly don't have to worry about GC as it is "automatically" done, this is a good book to understand and appreciate what goes on behind the scenes. Also, knowledge of the concepts in this book will be invaluable in performance tuning.Garbage Collection: Algorithms for Automatic Dynamic Memory Management OverviewModern software places increasing reliance on dynamic memory allocation, but its direct management is not only notoriously error-prone. Garbage collection eliminates many of these bugs. This reference presents each of the most important algorithms in detail, often with illustrations of its characteristic features and animations of its use.

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Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools Review

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Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools ReviewDuring each compiler stage (lexical analysis, syntax analysis, translation, type checking, translation, code generation, and code optimization) multiple methods, strategies, and algorithms are presented. This comprehensive book examines items that are unique to the various languages presented (Fortran, C, and Pascal); there are even sections on dealing with estimation of types (10.12) and symbolic debugging of optimized code (10.13). Wow! The exercises are thorough, challenging, and thought provoking. Examples are interleaved with the discussion and algorithms. There is an excellent set of historical and bibliographic information at the end of each chapter. The use of automated tools such as lex, yacc, and compiler-generators is discussed throughout the text. This is an advanced book, however a good understanding of compilers can be obtained without understanding the details of every algorithm.Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools OverviewThis introduction to compilers is the direct descendant of the well-known book by Aho and Ullman, Principles of Compiler Design. The authors present updated coverage of compilers based on research and techniques that have been developed in the field over the past few years. The book provides a thorough introduction to compiler design and covers topics such as context-free grammars, fine state machines, and syntax-directed translation. 0201100886B04062001

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Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (2nd Edition) Review

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Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (2nd Edition) ReviewI spent some serious quality time with the first edition (the "red dragon book"), in three main episodes over the past dozen years: 1) undergraduate compilers class, 2) industry project, and 3) parser generator implementation. During all three episodes, I was disappointed in various ways, though there is no denying that the book contains a wealth of information. As an undergraduate, I found the book somewhat impenetrable. When in industry, I found the book too abstract. When implementing a parser generator, I discovered that the book excludes important research results with regard to LR parser generation. It is the last disappointment that I will focus on.
The book presents parser generation in layers of increasing complexity, from SLR to LR to LALR, where LALR is presented as the penultimate algorithm, though LALR parsers can only handle a subset of the grammars that LR can handle. The justification for this is that the original Knuth LR algorithm is intractable for large grammars. However, an efficient, fully correct, approach for LR parser generation was published in 1977, and on top of that it appears easier to implement than efficient LALR parser generation! The red dragon book's original authors simply cannot have been unaware of this research result, but I suspect that they elected to warm over the "green dragon book" (published in 1977) rather than incorporate the state of the art as of 1986 into the "red dragon book". Now here we are another 20 years later, and as near as I can tell from reading through available online information, the "purple dragon book" is perpetuating this omission. The result of the red dragon book is that we have an entire generation of computer scientists who have been mislead to think that LALR is somehow superior to LR, and the purple dragon book is setting things up for yet another generation to be mislead.Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools (2nd Edition) OverviewCompilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools, known to professors, students, and developers worldwide as the "Dragon Book," is available in a new edition. Every chapter has been completely revised to reflect developments in software engineering, programming languages, and computer architecture that have occurred since 1986, when the last edition published. The authors, recognizing that few readers will ever go on to construct a compiler, retain their focus on the broader set of problems faced in software design and software development.

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Algorithms, Languages, Automata, & Compilers: A Practical Approach Review

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Algorithms, Languages, Automata, & Compilers: A Practical Approach ReviewHi,
Good Service, i got within the time which i expected. I really satisfied with service given by amazon.I would love to eexpect same service throught the time for my purchasesAlgorithms, Languages, Automata, & Compilers: A Practical Approach OverviewAlgorithms, Languages, Automata, & Compilers: A Practical Approach is designed to cover the standard theory of computing topics through a strong emphasis on practical applications rather than theorems and proofs. Finite automata, Turing machines, models of computation, complexity, solvability, and other topics that form a foundation of modern programming are discussed -first with a gentle theoretical orientation, and then applied through programming code and practical examples. JFLAP projects and applications are integrated throughout the book, and C# is used for all code.

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Types and Programming Languages Review

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Types and Programming Languages ReviewThis text is perhaps the most accessible yet thorough introduction to type systems I've encountered.
On the one hand, it offers excellent grounding: practical motivation is provided, numerous examples illustrate the concepts, and implementations are provided which can be used to typecheck and evaluate these examples. At various points, extended demonstrations of the type systems under consideration are given (e.g. showing how objects may be encoded). The exercises are well constructed and in many cases, accompanied with answers and detailed explanations in the appendix.
On the other hand, it offers an excellent exposition of the material: Pierce provides a lucid account of the static and dynamic semantics (primarily small-step operational) for various lambda calculi. He proceeds in a stepwise fashion via the gradual accretion of features: from first order (simply typed) systems to higher order systems incorporating bounded subtyping and recursion. He also gives attention to the metatheory of these systems (focusing on proofs of progress and preservation, and for systems with subtyping, of decideability). Internally, the text is well organized, with clear dependencies among the chapters, and the bibliography is extensive.
It should be noted that, while reasonably comprehensive, the text is necessarily limited in scope. For example, aside from the discussion on Featherweight Java, systems other than typed lambda calculus variants are not considered. In my opinion, the focus on these (in some sense "low-level") calculi makes foundational issues more apparent, and the linear progression from simple to complex variants lends a pleasant cohesiveness that would have been lost in a more general survey. However, as object/class encodings were discussed at various points, it would have been nice to see a more integrated presentation, in the spirit of the paper Comparing Object Encodings [BCP97].Types and Programming Languages OverviewA type system is a syntactic method for automatically checking theabsence of certain erroneous behaviors by classifying program phrases according tothe kinds of values they compute. The study of type systems--and of programminglanguages from a type-theoretic perspective -- -has important applications insoftware engineering, language design, high-performance compilers, and security.Thistext provides a comprehensive introduction both to type systems in computer scienceand to the basic theory of programming languages. The approach is pragmatic andoperational; each new concept is motivated by programming examples and the moretheoretical sections are driven by the needs of implementations. Each chapter isaccompanied by numerous exercises and solutions, as well as a runningimplementation, available via the Web. Dependencies between chapters are explicitlyidentified, allowing readers to choose a variety of paths through the material.Thecore topics include the untyped lambda-calculus, simple type systems, typereconstruction, universal and existential polymorphism, subtyping, boundedquantification, recursive types, kinds, and type operators. Extended case studiesdevelop a variety of approaches to modeling the features of object-orientedlanguages.

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