Types and Programming Languages

Types are the leaven of computer programming; they make it digestible. This excellent book uses types to navigate the rich variety of programming languages, bringing a new kind of unity to their usage, theory, and implementation. Its author writes with the authority of experience in all three of these aspects.

Robin Milner, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge

Written by an outstanding researcher, this book is well organized and very clear, spanning both theory and implementation techniques, and reflecting considerable experience in teaching and expertise in the subject.

John Reynolds, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University

Types and Programming Languages is carefully written with a well-balanced choice of topics. It focusses on pragmatics, with the right level of necessary theory. The exercises in this book range from easy to challenging and provide stimulating material for beginning and advanced readers, both programmers and the more theoretically minded.

Henk Barendregt, Faculty of Science, Mathematics, and Computer Science, University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Over the last two decades type theory has emerged as the central, unifying framework for research in programming languages. But these remarkable advances are not as well-known as they should be. The rapid advance of research on type systems for programming languages has far outpaced its dissemination to the rest of the field. No more. Pierce's book not only provides a comprehensive account of types for programming languages, but it does so in an engagingly elegant and concrete style that places equal emphasis on theoretical foundations and the practical problems of programming. This book will be the definitive reference for many years to come.

Robert Harper, Professor, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University