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CS 3723 Programming Languages Fall 2013 | |
Textbooks
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| ... all true scholarly knowledge ... loses much of its vitality in being reduced to print. The notion that live knowledge can exist in books is the Erasmian or Renaissance heresy; knowledge can exist only in persons. A modern academic variation of this mistake is the notion that "scholarship" equals "publication." The Orthodox Poetic: A Literary Catechism, Arvid Shulenberger, 1963. |
| Wagner Theory of Knowledge: Students are told they must understand a subject. There is no understanding. Successful students study their subject enough to become so familiar with it that they have the illusion of understanding. |
Main Textbook:
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Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions, by Dan Ariely (349 pages, 2010, $12.36). A metaphore for the course. See especially Chapter 7: The Problem of Procrastination and Self-Control: Why We Can't Make Ourselves Do What We Want to Do. |
Standard "Programming Languages" Texts −− No good choice:
- Pretty much worthless (and expensive): Concepts of Programming Languages (10th Ed.), by Robert Sebesta (816 pages, 2012, $114.62). He's come out with a new edition roughly every 2 years for 20 years.
- Much too hard (and expensive): Programming Languages: Concepts and Constructs (2nd Ed.), by Ravi Sethi (624 pages, 1996, $133.95). Text is quite difficult to read.
- Many, many others:
- Amazon, search under "Programming Language Books" for 14,373 results. Many about specific languages or specific topics are very useful, but mostly too detailed for this course.
- google, same search yields 61,600,000 results.
Online Material −− At least it's free:
- Lot's of my own stuff online at the course webpage. I will have links to other material.
Books about Specific Languages of Specific Topics −− This is more like it:
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These can be very useful now and later in your career.
The main problem for this course is that they deliver too
much material (and they cost too much money).
Again I will supply online material and links.
Revision date: 2013-07-16. (Please use ISO 8601, the International Standard.)