| Work in type systems for programming languages now touches many parts
of computer science, from language design and implementation to software
engineering, network security, databases, and analysis of concurrent and distributed
systems. The aim of this book, together with its predecessor, Types
and Programming Languages (Pierce [2002]—henceforth TAPL) is to offer a
comprehensive and accessible introduction to the area’s central ideas, results,
and techniques. The intended audience includes graduate students and researchers
from other parts of computer science who want get up to speed in
the area as a whole, as well as current researchers in programming languages
who need comprehensible introductions to particular topics. Unlike TAPL, the
present volume is conceived not as a unified text, but as a collection of more
or less separate articles, authored by experts on their particular topics.
Most of the material should be accessible to readers with a solid grasp of the
basic notations and techniques of operational semantics and type systems—
roughly, the first half of TAPL. Some chapters depend on more advanced
topics from the second half of TAPL or earlier chapters of the present volume;
these dependencies are indicated at the beginning of each chapter. Interchapter
dependencies have been kept to a minimum to facilitate reading in
any order. |
