I am designing a (hopefully) revolutionary programming language. (At least, revolutionary in its target domain; a general purpose DSL, if you will).
To do this, I am not reading a 44 page PDF to tell me everything I need to know, instead I'm reading thousands of pages of material(1), I've been prototyping code, talking to people and reading a lot of Lambda the Ultimate discussions. You just can't learn all the fundamental concepts, all the theory and the practical details (language and implementation/compiler/vm) from 44 pages...
1: Some of the stuff I've been reading especially for this:
Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming - 930 pages of fundamental programming language theory.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - 657 pages of Scheme goodness.
Advanced Topics in Dataflow Computing and Multithreading - 460 pages of research.
Countless SIGPLAN papers.
God knows how many web pages and random PDF's.
And thats just the theory, I've yet to get reading the actual COMPILER books. Near the top of my list is the dragon book - another 1000 pages.
To do this, I am not reading a 44 page PDF to tell me everything I need to know, instead I'm reading thousands of pages of material(1), I've been prototyping code, talking to people and reading a lot of Lambda the Ultimate discussions. You just can't learn all the fundamental concepts, all the theory and the practical details (language and implementation/compiler/vm) from 44 pages...
1: Some of the stuff I've been reading especially for this: Concepts, Techniques and Models of Computer Programming - 930 pages of fundamental programming language theory. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs - 657 pages of Scheme goodness. Advanced Topics in Dataflow Computing and Multithreading - 460 pages of research. Countless SIGPLAN papers. God knows how many web pages and random PDF's.
And thats just the theory, I've yet to get reading the actual COMPILER books. Near the top of my list is the dragon book - another 1000 pages.