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copied!<p>I really enjoyed reading <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=CuNruImLiCcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=concepts+in+programming+languages&source=bl&ots=JuMA1lHIV_&sig=V8TjHKlSz43fTA2-i-JKm14LrKk&hl=en&ei=3m_CS86pJtGHONzx3JYE&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Concepts in Programming Languages</a> by John C. Mitchell.</p> <p>The book covers a little bit of everything. It includes an introduction to mathematical foundations such as computability theory and lambda calculus, but I found it quite readable (at the time when I was reading it, which was early during my undergraduate studies). It also includes a tiny bit on the semantics of programming languages (that is, how to describe the meaning formally). </p> <p>Then it talks about many programming languages and concepts that come from them and are interesting including LISP (which is a basis for Clojure), ML (a basis for Microsoft's F#) but also Simula and Smalltalk (two fundamental OO languages) and C++ with Java (practical OO languages with quite different approach). There are also a few notes about different approaches to concurrency (quite important nowadays!)</p> <p>It doesn't go into much details and covers wide range of topics, which I consider as a benefit if you want to read it to get a broad overview of the programming language theory. The book actually motivated my current interest in programming languages :-).</p> <p><em>I noticed that the book has some negative reviews on Amazon, but it seems like most of them are from people who had to take Mitchell's course based on the book and didn't like the course.</em></p>

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