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copied!<p>I found the following resources helpful for understanding type inference, in order of increasing difficulty:</p> <ol> <li>Chapter 30 (Type Inference) of <a href="http://www.plai.org" rel="noreferrer">the freely available book PLAI</a>, <em>Programming Languages: Application and Interpretation</em>, sketches unification-based type inference.</li> <li>The summer course <a href="http://okmij.org/ftp/Computation/Computation.html#teval" rel="noreferrer"><em>Interpreting types as abstract values</em></a> presents elegant evaluators, type checkers, type reconstructors and inferencers using Haskell as a metalanguage.</li> <li>Chapter 7 (Types) of <a href="http://www.eopl3.com/" rel="noreferrer">the book EOPL</a>, <em>Essentials of Programming Languages</em>. </li> <li>Chapter 22 (Type Reconstruction) of <a href="http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/tapl/" rel="noreferrer">the book TAPL</a>, <em>Types and Programming Languages</em>, and the corresponding OCaml implementations <a href="http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/tapl/checkers/recon/core.ml" rel="noreferrer">recon</a> and <a href="http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/tapl/checkers/fullrecon/core.ml" rel="noreferrer">fullrecon</a>.</li> <li>Chapter 13 (Type Reconstruction) of <a href="http://dcpl.mit.edu/" rel="noreferrer">the new book DCPL</a>, <em>Design Concepts in Programming Languages</em>.</li> <li><a href="https://pinboard.in/u:namin/t:type-inference+paper" rel="noreferrer">Selection of academic papers</a>.</li> <li>Closure compiler's <a href="http://www.google.com/codesearch/p?hl=en#l5BkQmivP-Y/trunk/src/com/google/javascript/jscomp/TypeInference.java&q=TypeInference%20package:http://closure-compiler%5C.googlecode%5C.com&sa=N&cd=1&ct=rc" rel="noreferrer">TypeInference</a> is an example of the data-flow analysis approach to type inference, which is better suited to dynamic languages that the Hindler Milner approach.</li> </ol> <p>However, since the best way to learn is to do, I strongly suggest implementing type inference for a toy functional language by working through a homework assignment of a programming languages course.</p> <p>I recommend these two accessible homeworks in ML, which you can both complete in less than a day: </p> <ol> <li><a href="http://users.cs.fiu.edu/~smithg/cop4555/hw5.html" rel="noreferrer">PCF Interpreter</a> (<a href="http://github.com/namin/spots/tree/master/pcf/interp1.sml" rel="noreferrer">a solution</a>) to warm up.</li> <li><a href="http://users.cs.fiu.edu/~smithg/cop4555/hw6.html" rel="noreferrer">PCF Type Inference</a> (<a href="http://github.com/namin/spots/tree/master/pcf/type.sml" rel="noreferrer">a solution</a>) to implement algorithm W for Hindley-Milner type inference.</li> </ol> <p><a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/courses/15312-f04/assignments.html" rel="noreferrer">These assignments</a> are from a more advanced course:</p> <ol> <li><p><a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/courses/15312-f04/assignments/asst2/index.html" rel="noreferrer">Implementing MiniML</a></p></li> <li><p><a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/courses/15312-f04/assignments/asst5.pdf" rel="noreferrer">Polymorphic, Existential, Recursive Types (PDF)</a></p></li> <li><p><a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/courses/15312-f04/assignments/asst6/index.html" rel="noreferrer">Bi-Directional Typechecking (PDF)</a></p></li> <li><p><a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~fp/courses/15312-f04/assignments/asst7.pdf" rel="noreferrer">Subtyping and Objects (PDF)</a></p></li> </ol>

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