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If you are interested in the subject, The Implementation of Functional Programming Languages by Simon Peyton Jones is actually freely available on his Microsoft
by brmgb 8y ago
If you are interested in the subject, The Implementation of Functional Programming Languages by Simon Peyton Jones is actually freely available on his Microsoft Research page : https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-implementation-of-functional-programming-languages/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/the-imp...
The book is really great. It starts with a very interesting explanation of lambda calculus and how high-level functional programming language can be tied to it. Chapters 8 and 9 were written by Peter Hancock and cover step by step how to write a polymorphic type-checker (the examples are in Miranda but it's not far from Haskell).
For a 1987 book, it all aged very well.
- bollu 8y agoSelf plug: Here's a Rust implementation of [one of the Virtual machines described in the book (TIM)](https://github.com/bollu/timi https://github.com/bollu/timi) I worked hard on the UI, and I hope it shows. Exploring the states through the UI gave me deep insight into how the machine works.
- colinb 8y agoI once had an embarrassing post-concert-in-the-pub conversation with PH in which I confidently asserted that he didn’t understand polymorphism. “Yes I do. I wrote N chapters of a book about it”. I call BS and demand name of book. He names book. I say “but I have that book and it’s by SPJ”. “Ah” says Hank “but the chapters on polymorphism are mine!” Hilarity.