From: Eleanor McHugh <eleanor@...>
Date: 2008-05-08T23:25:21+09:00
Subject: Re: A computer science book to learn about interpreter, VM etc

On 8 May 2008, at 13:05, flexaxis@gmail.com wrote:
> I learned HTML and then I learned programming. Have been a JAVA
> programmer for a bunch of years and now I have been working on Rails
> for more than six months. Never worked on C though.
>
> I am having trouble understanding this thread.
> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.ruby/browse_thread/thread/d69165ad2b711c2c#
>
> But I want to understand what is being discussed. I guess I need a
> computer science book which describes what exactly interpreting means.
> Also the other day some guys were talking about ERB being interpreted
> but liquid (shopify guys) not being interpreted. I couldn't follow
> that too. Also I can't follow what is "Iron ruby". I mean what does it
> mean to have ruby being ported to .NET .
>
>
> Could you please refer me a book or two which explains these computer
> science fundamentals. Also note that I don't have much background to
> build up on so please refer books which are not too *geeky*.

It's probably out of print, but 'Programming Languages - An  
Interpreter-Based Approach' by Samuel N. Kamin is my fave book on the  
subject. It's a treatment of several families of programming languages  
(functional, OO, Lisp, etc.) which presents simplified interpreters  
and includes a chapter on Compilation. The code is in Pascal but don't  
be put off by that as it's clearly documented and Pascal is a very  
easy language to understand.

There's probably also a discussion of these and other concepts in  
'Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs' by Abelson and  
Sussman, but as my copy seems to have gone MIA I can't check at the  
moment.


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net
----
raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason