Practical Introduction to Denotational Semantics - Cambridge Computer Science Text Series #23 | Essential Guide for Programming Language Theory Students & Researchers | Perfect for Academic Study & Research Papers

This book greatest strength, and also its greatest weakness, is its brevity. It is a strength because it quickly gets down to business and presents a collection of techniques and devices for specifying the semantics of programming languages. It is a weakness because it glosses over many details and subtle points, especially when covering the theory of denotational semantics (complete partial orders, domain theory, lambda calculus). In some parts the text reads like underdeveloped lecture notes, not quite ready for a book yet. It gets better in the second half, though, and this is where most of the semantics for language features is presented.The practical treatment of the subject is not as overt as it may seem, judging only the title, but it does include an interpreter, written in Pascal, for the semantics of chapter 5, and another one, written in Algol-68, for the semantics presented in chapter 7. The choice of languages is a consequence of it being more than 20 years old; a functional language like Standard ML, OCaml or Haskell would be a perfect fit for the interpreters. However, the Pascal code should be understandable to any reasonably skilled programmer; the Algol-68 is a bit more of a trouble, but should present no problems for anyone who has familiarity with higher-order functions (like those in the functional languages mentioned before). Another effect of the book's age is the lack of some topics that matured or were developed since the 80's, like monadic semantics and concurrency. But the essentials are there.All in all, it's an interesting little book, but most useful if used together with lengthier, more thorough books like Formal Semantics of Programming Languages, or as supplementary reading in a course.