Say you want to get in on this Web 2.0 goodness, or maybe you need a programming language to improve your career abilities. Anthony Aaby has a book online that covers the theory of programming languages. It looks to be a good “behind the process” understanding of how languages work.
Programming languages can be understood in terms of a relatively small number of concepts. In particular, a programming language is syntactic realization of one or more computational models. The relationship between the syntax and the computational model is provided by a semantic description. Semantics provide meaning to programs. The computational model provides much of the intuition behind the construction of programs. When a programming language is faithful to the computational model, programs can be more easily written and understood.
It’s fairly heavy reading if you’re just casually interested. I can’t imagine reading this and then jumping up to figure out C++, but if you’ve a desire to learn programming, and have a nagging feeling that you want to know more about the concepts under the covers, this site is a good starting point to get your information.
Theory Introduction to Programming Languages – [Anthony Aaby]
