Book/chapter/paper club

General
,
1

We're starting a book/chapter club! 1-December.

Please reply with book/chapters/papers you would be interested in working through with others.

How will it work?

  1. Reply here with your suggestions to get participants.
  2. Make a topic and tag it 'book-club'
  3. Discussion in the replies. Discord is available for realtime text and voice chat, or if someone wants to screen share.
  • Depending on the work, it might be purely discussion, or working through questions together. Whatever works best for participants.

Don't be too strict. Anything Racket adjacent is fine. Including language design.

PS: Inspiration from PWL and the Scheme Discord book club currently going through The Little Schemer.

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I am reading Semantics Engineering with PLT Redex and would be interested in discussing chapters and exercises. I have read through to Part 2, so would be open to starting from the beginning of Part 1, or starting from the beginning of Part 2.

As a separate idea, I would be interested in a slow reading of "A Nanopass Framework for Compiler Education" and potential offshoot projects to attempt to practice the methodology.

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I would be interested in going through The Little Typer or The Little Prover. I might join @michaelrauh's idea of Semantics Engineering, I've always been intrigued by Redex, but more for automating other modeling workflows than PL-related ones. Good book/article on probabilistic programming would be interesting too.

Finally, PAIP (Paradigms in Artificial Intelligence Programming) by Norvig has been on my list for ages - it really isn't about AI, or rather, it is about old-school AI. But I really liked the exposition (I got to chapter 8 some years ago), and it's in Common Lisp. It's fairly long, so one would have to pick a subpart, and for many people I'd expect it to be too elementary.

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FWIW, IU's compiler course goes through the implementation of a nanopass compiler for scheme and it's taught in Racket. Course Webpage for Compilers (P423, P523, E313, and E513) | IU-P423-P523-E313-E513-Fall-2020

The textbook for the course is here: book.pdf

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This is fantastic! Thank you! In that case I would recommend as a book either the Redex book or this Essentials of Compilation book you have just linked.

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I'd be up for Chapter 4 of PAIP, doing the implementations in Racket.

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For those following, that's the chapter reconstructing GPS - the general problem solver (which obviously did not turn out to be a general problem solver at all).

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Book Club starts today!

The nominations are:

  • Semantics Engineering with PLT Redex

  • A Nanopass Framework for Compiler Education
    and/or IU compiler course and book.pdf

  • The Little Typer

  • The Little Prover

  • (Good book/article on probabilistic programming)

  • Paradigms in Artificial Intelligence Programming

In addition to the discussion options previously mentioned, the book club is also on the agenda for the Racket Meetup: Saturday December 4

Have at it!

Stephen

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How about a poll (2 votes each):

  • Semantics Engineering with PLT Redex
  • A Nanopass Framework for Compiler Education
  • The Little Typer
  • The Little Prover
  • Paradigms in Artificial Intelligence Programming

0 voters

And damn, I missed the Racket meetup again, after putting it in my diary. I'll try to remember next time.

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The poll is a good idea @marc !

I missed the last meet-up too. I hope I can catch you at the next meet-up!

Best wishes
Stephen

11

I’ve dusted off an old copy of paip and started on chapter 4. (Converting Common LISP to Racket is tricky if you don’t know Common LISP, so I’ve ended up looking at chapters 1 to 3)

The point of a book club is to have some discussion- , should discussion take place here, Slack or discord?

  • Discourse
  • Slack
  • Discord

0 voters