Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation, 3rd Ed

[Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation](https://www.plai.org/)

From the preface;

> I have also written this book with working programmers in mind. Many of them may have not had a formal computer science education, or at least one that included a proper introduction to programming languages. At some point, like that 90% of students, some of them become curious about the media they use. I want this book to speak to them, gently drawing them away from the hustle and bustle of daily programming into a space of reflection and thought. - Shriram Krishnamurthi, Brown University

Great work.

Sorry side track totally. as part of my degree is under a Chicago School professor, who I respect but still his work find puzzling. Can this be a counter-example … just like many others open source project. The problem of public good i.e. those unlike fish cannot be eaten. He went on to do work on trademark, copyright and patent. Well copyright is what open source rely upon he would say. But what is the incentive of doing it. Would the total output less because of this … he would ask.

The question as normal here: why not say sell it and give the money to something you like, like charity.

   why not say sell it and give the money to something you like, like charity.

Per the author's website ( https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/ ), he is a dedicated educator. Maybe he explicitly or implicitly intended the publication of this work under a Creative Commons license to be an exercise of charity (in the "love your neighbor" sense), kindness, goodness, and/or generosity.

At the end of the day, somebody needs to do the work in order to create good. Adding layers of transactions can only reduce, not increase efficiency.

If you, a person who knows something, want to achieve a public good in educating others on that thing, then the most efficient way of achieving that is just spreading the knowledge yourself. If you sold your knowledge in a book, and then used the money to pay someone else to write a book teaching the same thing, and then distributed that for free, you can only have lost efficiency.

It's like asking "Why should I pay for college instead of working to make money to pay someone else to go to college and then teach that information to me": It's absurd, because it introduces entirely unnecessary transactions.

>How SMoL Becomes Large

30 seconds into opening the textbook and I already like it.