language parallax

Just found a link to David Schmidt’s Denotational Semantics: A Methodology for Language Development on Lambda the Ultimate. Haven’t checked it out yet, but it looks like a good online reference and source material for looking at declarative descriptions of programming languages.

It still perplexes me why the syntax of programming langauges were so well incorporated into programming language development processes, but semantics have been so neglected. I suppose it was just a matter of convenience — the cost/benefit analysis probably wasn’t very favorable to PL implementors in the 80’s.