most recent 30 from http://mathoverflow.net 2013-05-23T04:28:50Z http://mathoverflow.net/feeds/question/24659 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf http://mathoverflow.net/questions/24659/resources-for-learning-domain-theory jvoorhis 2010-05-14T20:47:10Z 2013-05-17T02:00:16Z

<p>I'm a computer programmer who's caught on to denotational semantics. I mostly work with Ruby, JavaScript and C, but I know a little Haskell and ML. I've taken my first steps towards reasoning about what my software <em>means</em>, but my knowledge of domain theory is weak. DCPOs, chains, new notation – can you recommend a coherent introduction to this stuff?</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/24659/resources-for-learning-domain-theory/24677#24677 jef 2010-05-15T01:01:13Z 2010-05-15T01:01:13Z

<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521803381/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521803381/</a></p> <p>I read this book for a course when I was an undergraduate and it is a very good introduction for all the things you mentioned.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/24659/resources-for-learning-domain-theory/24702#24702 Andrej Bauer 2010-05-15T06:46:07Z 2010-05-15T06:46:07Z

<p>The book recommended by jef is the domain-theory bible. It may be a bit overwhelming for a beginner. For an easier and more compressed introduction I recommend that you have a look at Abramsky and Jung's chapter on domain theory from the Handbook of Logic in Computer Science. It is <a href="http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axj/pub/papers/handy.ps.gz" rel="nofollow">available in gzipped Postscript</a> from Achim's home page, and CiteSeerX has it in PDF <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.50.8851" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/24659/resources-for-learning-domain-theory/24714#24714 Antonio E. Porreca 2010-05-15T08:57:57Z 2010-05-15T08:57:57Z

<p>I used the book <em>The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages</em> by G. Winskel for an undergraduate course, and I found it a reasonably good introduction to the topic; it also covers operational semantics and its relationship with denotational semantics, which I found quite enlightening since the former one is probably easier to grasp initially.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/24659/resources-for-learning-domain-theory/24792#24792 supercooldave 2010-05-15T18:33:27Z 2010-05-15T18:33:27Z

<p><em>Semantics with Applications: An Appetizer</em> by Hanne Riis Nielson and Flemming Nielson provides a rudimentary introduction, also linking denotational semantics to program analysis via abstract interpretation. <a href="http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/gdp/publications/Domains_a4.ps" rel="nofollow"><em>Plotkin's notes</em></a> are excellent, more comprehensive, and more theoretically bent.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/24659/resources-for-learning-domain-theory/130891#130891 Weng Kin Ho 2013-05-17T02:00:16Z 2013-05-17T02:00:16Z

<p>Another good book that teaches the ropes of domain theory for a beginner is Thomas Streicher's "Domain-Theoretic Foundations of Functional Programming", World Scientific. I highly recommend this book because of its clarity and rigour. Please look up the link at <a href="http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/6284" rel="nofollow">http://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/6284</a> for information on this book. The functional language it works with is a prototypical simply-typed lambda calculus, called PCF (Programming language for Computable Functionals). The domain theory developed in it and the denotational semantics defined is systematic in its organization. </p>