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Types and Programming Languages (The MIT Press)

Benjamin C. Pierce · 4 HN comments
HN Books has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention "Types and Programming Languages (The MIT Press)" by Benjamin C. Pierce.
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Amazon Summary
A comprehensive introduction to type systems and programming languages. A type system is a syntactic method for automatically checking the absence of certain erroneous behaviors by classifying program phrases according to the kinds of values they compute. The study of type systems―and of programming languages from a type-theoretic perspective―has important applications in software engineering, language design, high-performance compilers, and security. This text provides a comprehensive introduction both to type systems in computer science and to the basic theory of programming languages. The approach is pragmatic and operational; each new concept is motivated by programming examples and the more theoretical sections are driven by the needs of implementations. Each chapter is accompanied by numerous exercises and solutions, as well as a running implementation, available via the Web. Dependencies between chapters are explicitly identified, allowing readers to choose a variety of paths through the material. The core topics include the untyped lambda-calculus, simple type systems, type reconstruction, universal and existential polymorphism, subtyping, bounded quantification, recursive types, kinds, and type operators. Extended case studies develop a variety of approaches to modeling the features of object-oriented languages.
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Sep 22, 2018 · wcrichton on The Little Typer
Strongly recommend Types and Programming Languages [1]. I think it's the most useful + accessible book on type theory out there.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Types-Programming-Languages-MIT-Press...

Hmm, H-M, AKA Damas-Milner, p 331 in TAPL (indexed as D-M only, so easy to overlook, and I can't see where it's in Harper's Practical Foundations, AFAICT.

As an aside, the other day i started flipping thru Harper's Lazy Eval writeup, and found it surprisingly readable, even if i was skipping reading the rules.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/plbook/book.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Types-Programming-Languages-Benjamin-P...

here is a book that will school you: http://www.amazon.com/Types-Programming-Languages-Benjamin-P...

It is a great book, but a little dense. Its example language is a typed lambda calculus. This is both good and bad. The good: you can evaluate most expressions in your head or with a pencil. The bad: sometimes it is difficult to read without evaluating the expressions.

It is heavy on proofs and mathematics, but it does what it says: it introduces you to the basics of type theory as applied to programming languages.

Edit: an amazon reviewer pointed at http://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Object-Oriented-Languages-... as an alternative book. I haven't read it but it does look useful.

Well, Benjamin Pierce has a 600 page book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262162091/

Followed by a 600 page book: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262162288/

fogus
Neither of which deal directly with Homotopy Type theory AFAIK.
larsberg
Professor Harper's own book (free! while in draft form), http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/plbook/book.pdf , is a better source for understanding the material in this post.

But, to be perfectly honest, I'm a systems-focused PL graduate student and have spent quite a bit of time studying this stuff and doubt that I could easily produce a more accessible version of this post. I tried (in the comments block here) and ran on to about two pages before realizing I had only covered the back story on his "trinity" analogy without even getting to this post itself. Someone far smarter than I probably could, but don't feel disappointed if you found this post mathematically challenging even if you normally follow PL theory. It took me a solid cup of coffee and a half an hour to deeply understand what he was saying.

Pierce's TAPL primarily covers the type side of this "trinity" and TAPL2 really only has one relevant chapter, covering Dependent Types.

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