Reading List Reprise

When I started this blog I posted my reading list, having recently finished Types and Programming Languages I thought it was probably time to revisit the reading list.

Essentials of Programming Languages, Daniel Freidman

I finished this early in the year. Unfortunately I never did finish working the examples beyond the first couple of chapters. There is some very interesting material in this book, particularly the last couple of chapters.

Types and Programming Languages, Benjamin Pierce

I recently finished this (back in October), and loved it. This book is illuminating, and it definately achieved its goal. This book is a superb example of how to introduce a reader to a field, and provide the necessary preparation for accessing further works.

Introduction to Graph Theory, Richard J. Trudeau

Read, and yes it was a fun book, but unfortunately did not ever really reach the depth I needed for it to be immediately applicable. What I received from this book was mostly vocab.

Making reliable distributed systems in the presesnce of software errors, Joe Armstrong

I know Greg was annoyed by some trivial errors in some of the example code; however I am very glad I've read this thesis. This is the closest I have seen to practical self-reparing systems. An gentle and easy read, it lays out a practicioners framework for designing reliable systems. Highly recommended.

The Polyadic PI Calculus : A Tutorial, Robin Milner

Never did finish reading this as I ended up borrowing Milner's book and reading it instead. I'm curious to know if there has been any work on the relationship between PI-calculus processes and continuations.

Genuinely Functional User Interfaces, Antony Courtney, Conal Elliott

As I said this is my primary area of interest, and it remains the long-term focus of my efforts. This paper remains a core influence on my interest in Type-Theory, Category Theory, and Language Semantics

Arrows, Robots, and Functional Reactive Programming, Paul Hudak, Henrik Nilsson, Antony Courtney, John Peterson

Opps, that's right I was going to read this one... I'll have to carry this one over to my new reading list...

Other works read worthy of note include:

Purely Functional Data Structures, Chris Okasaki

This book stands alongside my copies of Cormen, Date, Brooks, and K&R without shame. Only a year old and already starting to wear from use. Personally I consider it essential reading for anyone serious about programming. I am seriously considering buying a second copy so I can lend one without losing it from my library. This book is important enough that I will be posting seperately about it.

Other things read and recommended:

• I reread Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month
• I reread Kernighan and Pike, The Practice of Programming
• I'm reading selected chapters of Benjamin Pierce, Advanced Topics in Types and Programming Languages, which is proving to be even better than TAPL due to it's focus on more practical issues (although it does rather assume you have at least a basic grasp of the theory in TAPL :)

Other things of interest include:

• I'm half way through Joseph Landin, An Introduction to Algebraic Structures
• Several papers on Core Erlang (I'll track down citations if anyone is interested)
• Various standards including the RDF stack, and the XMPP RFC's
• Started Roy Crole, Categories for Types