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Programming and Programming Languages

papl.cs.brown.edu

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Re: Programming and Programming Languages

#11

Post by shriramkmurthi »

makmanalp wrote: post #8

His other book was PLAI which was pretty cool: http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs173/2012/book/ I worked through it for a class, and I distinctly remember a moment where I thought "what the fuck - did I just write a working type inferencer?". It has a great way of simplifying things to the point where adding a complex new language feature isn't a distant theoretical proposition, it seems like a simple and straightforward…

PLAI is almost completely subsumed into PAPL. With each revision, though, the PLAI material gets reorganized and distributed across PAPL, so at some point it will no longer be an identifiable subset. The idea is that programming inspires new programming languages, while programming languages help us make sense of programs. Therefore, the two should be tightly intertwined. The first edition of PLAI tried one way to achieve this synthesis (but didn't really succeed as much as I'd have liked); PAPL is a fresh attempt at getting there.

Re: Programming and Programming Languages

#12

Post by shriramkmurthi »

krat0sprakhar wrote: post #5
pgbovine wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like a spiritual successor to HtDP, which is somewhat opposed to the SICP philosophy, even though both use Scheme variants: http://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/fffk-h...

How is HtDP opposed to the SICP philosophy? From my reading both come off as espousing the more or less same ideas for building programs.

What @pgbovine said. (-:

Re: Programming and Programming Languages

#13

Post by shriramkmurthi »

taeric wrote: post #10
pgbovine wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like a spiritual successor to HtDP, which is somewhat opposed to the SICP philosophy, even though both use Scheme variants: http://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/fffk-h...

I am curious what evidence there is that SICP is responsible for "[many introductory] courses quickly disappeared again due to shortcomings of the book and the whimsies of Scheme."

It's a comment based on our view of the historical record, having been present during the rise and fall of SICP. It is not a formal evidence-based claim.

Re: Programming and Programming Languages

#14

Post by shriramkmurthi »

yzzxy wrote: post #9
pgbovine wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like a spiritual successor to HtDP, which is somewhat opposed to the SICP philosophy, even though both use Scheme variants: http://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/fffk-h...

Interesting... It seems to me that FP is having quite a renaissance recently, which could limit the relevance of that paper's contentions today. I'm also seeing quite a backlash against OOP and especially OOP as the One True Paradigm that it was pushed as in throughout the 00s - this can be seen not only in FP language growth but also in the design of other new languages like Go that lack many OOP features. Honestly,…

The paper's premise is a broad one. Its authors are hard-core functional programmers, but believe that eventually students have to learn something beyond just pure FP. Too often, introductory curricula are designed with a "screw what happens later" attitude, which ends up being self-defeating. The paper's point is that they should instead provide a gradual progression, and that this progression should be over at least two different time-scales.

Re: Programming and Programming Languages

#15

Post by shriramkmurthi »

yzzxy wrote: post #2

At first glance this book appears in many ways to be a spiritual successor to SICP... does this hold up for anyone who has read it more throughly?

With all due respect to @pgbovine, it is intended as a spiritual successor to both, but is also its own thing. It is being built atop the design methodology of HtDP, which SICP sorely lacks. It has some topical overlap with SICP. But it has an entire second textbook contained in there about the study of programming languages, which neither SICP nor HtDP has. Hence the title: P _and_ PL. It's two books in one, but (increasingly) intertwined.

Re: Programming and Programming Languages

#17

Post by taeric »

shriramkmurthi wrote: post #13
taeric wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious what evidence there is that SICP is responsible for "[many introductory] courses quickly disappeared again due to shortcomings of the book and the whimsies of Scheme."

It's a comment based on our view of the historical record, having been present during the rise and fall of SICP. It is not a formal evidence-based claim.

Fair enough. And I hasten to add that I do not have any counter evidence. I think I heard rumors of the book when I was at gatech in the late 90s. Never took a course in that book, though. I wasn't in CS. CmpE was an interesting beast back then.

It seemed that the money was heavily pushing Java and that most curriculum immediately jumped to where they thought future money was. Sometimes they would back off and try to get back to a more theoretical or instruction based methodology, but would always hedge with a language that was seen as friendly to industry.

Re: Programming and Programming Languages

#18

Post by shriramkmurthi »

zodiac wrote: post #16

@shriramkmurthi may I know what license PLAI and PAPL are released under? I couldn't find it on the linked page.

PLAI's license is CC BY-NC-SA (3.0 US). I have not yet decided for sure with PAPL.

At any rate, I'm committed to having a full copy of the book available for free to all, as is also true of HtDP (we were one of the pioneers in this space) and PLAI (which has even more free/commercial options than HtDP).

You may assume at least a CC BY-NC-ND, which lets typical users have at it right away.

Re: Programming and Programming Languages

#19

Post by shriramkmurthi »

shriramkmurthi wrote: post #13
taeric wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious what evidence there is that SICP is responsible for "[many introductory] courses quickly disappeared again due to shortcomings of the book and the whimsies of Scheme."

It's a comment based on our view of the historical record, having been present during the rise and fall of SICP. It is not a formal evidence-based claim.

@taeric, by "the book" do you mean SICP or HtDP? HtDP was used for a few years at Georgia Tech, and then that stopped. There are various views on why. (-:

Re: Programming and Programming Languages

#20

Post by shriramkmurthi »

makmanalp wrote: post #8

His other book was PLAI which was pretty cool: http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs173/2012/book/ I worked through it for a class, and I distinctly remember a moment where I thought "what the fuck - did I just write a working type inferencer?". It has a great way of simplifying things to the point where adding a complex new language feature isn't a distant theoretical proposition, it seems like a simple and straightforward…

By the way, you've summed up Pyret quite nicely (-:, though it is more than just that sum (with more goodies on the way).
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