Warren's Abstract Machine: A Tutorial Reconstruction

I love love love love this book. It's what made me grok prolog. I needed to understand how terms were lowered to computation to really "get it", which isn't how most people teach it. The book builds up micro versions of an interpreter and iterates on it as it goes, defining just the small parts you need at each step.

I have a print version (only $30 on Amazon) and highly recommend it. It's very linear, so you can read it in chunks at a time and away from a computer. It probably doesn't seem like it from the subject matter, but the format makes it a great traveling or camping book.

It's <100 pages + appendices.

My only "complaint" is that due to the notation some pages can get pretty dense towards the end. But you've also spent the entire book building up the notation from first principles, so it's not like it'd lose anyone regardless of background. I just know I cruised through the first 3/4ths of the book before suddenly spending alot more time on each page :P

I wish more indepth tutorials existed that followed this style. The only thing I can think of that's sort of comparable is Robert Nystrom's "Crafting Interpreters", though that is targeting a very different audience.

it's fundamental and very very very well written. love it, too. we still need to look at other engines beyond wam to keep the field alive (mini kanren doesn't use wam).

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