An Experiential Introduction to Principles of Programming Languages

This introductory textbook teaches the principles of programming languages by using an experiential learning style, in which students learn about language features by realizing those features in a pedagogical compiler. Students use Java, the most commonly, used programming language in the first two years of the computer science curriculum, as the implementation language throughout. The book also discusses a range of emerging topics in programming languages missing from existing textbooks, including concurrency, Big Data, and event-driven programming. The goal is to prepare students to design, implement, analyze, and understand both domain-specific and general-purpose programming languages.