Concepts of Programming Languages (11th Edition)

I've read my fair share of CS textbooks, and I have encountered bad books. This is infact not a bad book, it's not poorly written. The real issue with it is the material itself is tricky. Describing things like lexical analysis, syntax analysis... context free grammar, etc.. These are difficult things to talk about. But the author does a good job, and if you're a student of computer science you're gona have to learn this some time. Most of the bad reviews you see about this book are students that just dislike the material itself, it's not poorly written.I will say one thing about it... it doesn't use beginners language. Assuming you're an undergrad, I'd recommend this book to either 2nd semester Juniors or Seniors. Assuming you have the background and that you have a handle on the material of previous classes, it's actually a very well written and informative book, I think it does just about as good as you could do with some of the material.So I'd like to thank the author and counteract some of the negative reviews.I probably would give it 4.5 stars if I could specify that, the only downside I will say about it is it assumes a reasonable background in programming. It's not for someone that has only learned 2 programming languages and is really still a beginner when it comes to understanding programming languages. Really it's for someone who might be considered intermediate level in a specific language and is looking to broaden their understanding of languages in general.Very educational, ultimately.

This book was educational but intense. Its like trying to learn russian in a book written in chinese--when you are blind.

I own several editions of this book and it is a great book. Though keep in mind that for this older edition, where the 12th Edition is the latest, there are no longer supplemental materials available online. Nor does the book come with a companion CD.

Arrived in good shape, should be just fine for my class.

As indicated by the headline, what sort of quality you can come to expect from this textbook depends on what section you're currently studying. The earlier sections provide a great overview of certain topics and paradigms while skimming over others or explaining them in such a convoluted way that is a task in and of itself to even pick apart the explanation.The summaries at the end often have mixed results in terms of quality. Some are quite thorough and really touch upon everything discussed well, and others are laughably short in a sort of "well basically we talked about this, this, and this." The problems seem decent, some of which have been assigned in weekly open-book quizzes, but otherwise they're nothing special.The book itself is a general overview of programming languages, and that pretty much speaks to its quality as well: general, average, and nothing special.

If you're not buying this for a class, like I did, do not buy. It is very poorly written and seems intended to give a comparison between functional and imperative programming languages. Paired with the class I took, it appeared to me that the author wants students to fall in love with functional programming languages as a must have skill for machine learning and data analytics. I ended up skipping through most parts of the books and using other resources and online tutorials to complete my schoolwork because of how unreliable the information in the text was. Some were correct, but if you don't know the material beforehand or try to run all sample code, you might not catch what's wrong. It's such a bad book that even this review might not do justice to whatever the author's intentions were. I'm happy to be nearing the point where I can dump it in the recycling bin. I cannot keep it with the rest of my previous school textbooks as reference.

Excellent!

Bought for school.