Quick References

• Ruby
  • Core language
  • Classes & methods (1.9.3) : Array, Hash, Regexp, String
• OCaml
  • Real World OCaml
  • Core language
  • Basic libraries: Pervasives, List, String, Str

Software Installation

• Download Ruby 1.9.3 for Windows here. Directions for other systems
  here.
• Download OCaml 4.00.1 for Windows here. Directions for other systems
  here
• Download SWI-prolog 6.6.1 for Windows here. Directions for other
  systems here.

Ruby

• Core language
• Classes & methods (1.9.3):
  • Array
  • Hash
  • Regexp
  • String
• ruby-lang.org
• Quick Start (Ruby in 20 minutes)
• The Pragmatic Programmer’s Guide
  • “The Pickaxe Book” is a more comprehensive overview of Ruby.
    It’s an online version of the first edition of a printed Ruby
    book. The only thing to keep in mind is that it covers Ruby
    1.6, while you can buy the printed version which covers the
    current Ruby 1.8. We probably won’t do anything for this course
    where the difference between version
    1.6 and 1.8 would make much difference. There’s a lot of
    information here which you won’t need- the most relevant
    sections are the first fourteen listed (the first up through
    “Basic Input and Output”), then “When Trouble Strkes”, “Ruby and
    Its World”, and
    “The Ruby Language”
    and
    “Classes and Objects”.
    These last two are good summary references for the language.
• Ruby documentation
  • A list from ruby-lang.org of Ruby reference manuals, online
    sources of Ruby information (some of the ones which will probably be
    more useful are mentioned specifically below), and Ruby articles. If
    you want to buy a printed book about Ruby several are listed.
• Ruby User’s Guide
  • An English translation of a book written by the designer of the language. More of a language reference than a tutorial.

OCaml

For this iteration of the course I’ve written a page about
setting up OCaml and tools like
Merlin.

• Real World OCaml is an excellent free
  book on OCaml programming. It’s both comprehensive and current, and
  includes many examples. The first six chapters will be the material
  most relevant for our class.

• The Caml Language - Everything

• The OCaml Manual

• Tutorials: at OCaml site and
  interactive tutorial in the style of Code
  Academy

• Developing Applications with Objective Caml

• Introduction to Objective Caml

• Interactive OCaml Tutorial

Formal grammars and finite automata

• Online tool for playing with regular expression

• Rubular is an awesome tool that does this for
  Ruby.

• Book: Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages & Computation

• Book: Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Michael Sipser
  This book has lots of good explanation. See Sipser’s course for more
  material.

• Wikipedia actually has good pages on some of these things (and the
  references they cite are generally useful too):

  • regular expressions
  • dfas
  • nfas
  • context-free grammars

Lambda calculus

• Overview of lambda calculus at Wikipedia

• BRO system for animating reductions
  in the lambda calculus

Java Generics

• Sun Tutorial

Java Garbage Collection

• Java’s garbage-collected heap: Java World article

Ruby On Rails

• Rails is a full-stack framework for
  developing database-backed web applications according to the
  Model-View-Control pattern.

• Instant Rails is a
  single package containing Ruby, Rails, Apache, and MySQL, all
  pre-configured and ready to run without installation. Currently for
  Windows only.

Other relevant texts

Previous required texts for CMSC 330 have chapters on relevant topics
covered in this course. If the lecture notes are insufficient, look
for these books. They should be available in the university library.

• Concepts of Programming Languages (Seventh Edition) by R. Sebesta,
  Addison Wesley (2006) (ISBN 0-321-33025-0).

• Programming Languages: Design and Implementation (Fourth Edition) by
  T. Pratt and M. Zelkowitz, Prentice Hall (2001) (ISBN 0-13-027678-2).

• O’Reilly History of Programming Languages Poster