Programming Language Explorations is a tour of several modern programming languages in use today. The book teaches fundamental language concepts using a language-by-language approach. As each language is presented, the authors introduce new concepts as they appear, and revisit familiar ones, comparing their implementation with those from languages seen in prior chapters. The goal is to present and explain common theoretical concepts of language design and usage, illustrated in the context of practical language overviews. Twelve languages have been carefully chosen to illustrate a wide range of programming styles and paradigms. The book introduces each language with a common trio of example programs, and continues with a brief tour of its basic elements, type system, functional forms, scoping rules, concurrency patterns, and sometimes, metaprogramming facilities. Each language chapter ends with a summary, pointers to open source projects, references to materials for further study, and a collection of exercises, designed as further explorations. Following the twelve featured language chapters, the authors provide a brief tour of over two dozen additional languages, and a summary chapter bringing together many of the questions explored throughout the text. Targeted to both professionals and advanced college undergraduates looking to expand the range of languages and programming patterns they can apply in their work and studies, the book pays attention to modern programming practice, covers cutting-edge languages and patterns, and provides many runnable examples, all of which can be found in an online GitHub repository. The exploration style places this book between a tutorial and a reference, with a focus on the concepts and practices underlying programming language design and usage. Instructors looking for material to supplement a programming languages or software engineering course may find the approach unconventional, but hopefully, a lot more fun.

Programming Language Explorations helps its readers gain proficiency in programming language practice and theory by presenting both example-focused, chapter-length explorations of fourteen important programming languages and detailed discussions of the major concepts transcending multiple languages. A language-by-language approach is sandwiched between an introductory chapter that motivates and lays out the major concepts of the field and a final chapter that brings together all that was learned in the middle chapters into a coherent and organized view of the field. Each of the featured languages in the middle chapters is introduced with a common trio of example programs and followed by a tour of its basic language features and coverage of interesting aspects from its type system, functional forms, scoping rules, concurrency patterns, and metaprogramming facilities. These chapters are followed by a brief tour of over 40 additional languages designed to enhance the reader’s appreciation of the breadth of the programming language landscape and to motivate further study. Targeted to both professionals and advanced college undergraduates looking to expand the range of languages and programming patterns they can apply in their work and studies, the book pays attention to modern programming practices, keeps a focus on cutting-edge programming patterns, and provides many runnable examples, all of which are available in the book’s companion GitHub repository. The combination of conceptual overviews with exploratory example-focused coverage of individual programming languages provides its readers with the foundation for more effectively authoring programs, prompting AI programming assistants, and, perhaps most importantly, learning—and creating—new languages.

Programming Language Explorations is a tour of several modern programming languages in use today. The book teaches fundamental language concepts using a language-by-language approach. As each language is presented, the authors introduce new concepts as they appear, and revisit familiar ones, comparing their implementation with those from languages seen in prior chapters. The goal is to present and explain common theoretical concepts of language design and usage, illustrated in the context of practical language overviews. Twelve languages have been carefully chosen to illustrate a wide range of programming styles and paradigms. The book introduces each language with a common trio of example programs, and continues with a brief tour of its basic elements, type system, functional forms, scoping rules, concurrency patterns, and sometimes, metaprogramming facilities.

An Active Learning Approach to Teaching the Main Ideas in Computing Explorations in Computing: An Introduction to Computer Science and Python Programming teaches computer science students how to use programming skills to explore fundamental concepts and computational approaches to solving problems. Tbook gives beginning students an introduction to

Introduction to Computing is a comprehensive text designed for the CS0 (Intro to CS) course at the college level. It may also be used as a primary text for the Advanced Placement Computer Science course at the high school level.

Based on the author’s introductory course at the University of Oregon, Explorations in Computing: An Introduction to Computer Science focuses on the fundamental idea of computation and offers insight into how computation is used to solve a variety of interesting and important real-world problems. Taking an active learning approach, the text encourages students to explore computing ideas by running programs and testing them on different inputs. It also features illustrations by Phil Foglio, winner of the 2009 and 2010 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Novel. Classroom-Tested Material The first four chapters introduce key concepts, such as algorithms and scalability, and hone practical lab skills for creating and using objects. In the remaining chapters, the author covers "divide and conquer" as a problem solving strategy, the role of data structures, issues related to encoding data, computer architecture, random numbers, challenges for natural language processing, computer simulation, and genetic algorithms. Through a series of interactive projects in each chapter, students can experiment with one or more algorithms that illustrate the main topic. Requiring no prior experience with programming, these projects show students how algorithms provide computational solutions to real-world problems. Web Resource The book’s website at www.cs.uoregon.edu/eic presents numerous ancillaries. The lab manual offers step-by-step instructions for installing Ruby and the RubyLabs gem with Windows XP, Mac OS X, and Linux. The manual includes tips for editing programs and running commands in a terminal emulator. The site also provides online documentation of all the modules in the RubyLabs gem. Once the gem is installed, the documentation can be read locally by a web browser. After working through the in-depth examples in this textbook, students will gain a better overall understanding of what computer science is about and how computer scientists think about problems.

The study of natural phenomena using computer simulation is a major new research tool in the physical, chemical, biological and social sciences. It is useful for studying simple systems, and it is essential for the study of complex systems. Using Mathematica, an integrated software environment for scientific programming, numerical analysis and visualization, this book describes computer simulations applicable to a wide range of phenomena.