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as someone who has never written a compiler but has an intense interest in doing so, this is also very welcomed!
by pyvpx 10y ago
as someone who has never written a compiler but has an intense interest in doing so, this is also very welcomed!
- tomcam 10y agoNow is is a great time to write your first compiler. The wealth of tools and docs these days is breathtaking. Give it a go!
- csmattryder 10y agoI bet you have, but if not, do yourself a favour and grab a copy of "Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools" aka "The Dragon Book". Still got my copy from uni, dog-eared and sticky-noted throughout.
- tom_mellior 10y agoI recall the classic 1986 edition of the Dragon Book spending waaaay too much time on boring details of lexing and parsing. I think it turned many people off the interesting aspects of compilers. It also had an interval-based formulation of data-flow analysis that nobody uses, possibly because it's (a) more complex than worklist iteration, and (b) not applicable to irreducible control flow graphs. Are newer editions better and more focused on interesting solutions to interesting problems?
- rwallace 10y agoTry the Tiger Book instead (a.k.a. 'Modern compiler implementation in C', or there are Java or ML versions if those are more to your taste). It has a better balance: more to the point treatment of lexing and parsing, leaving more space for a more comprehensive treatment of optimization and code generation.
- pjmlp 10y agoI second it, even if the book has a few issues here and there, it was one of the best books I read on the subject.
- astrange 10y agoI recommend making sure to avoid reading this book, it spends all its time making mountains out of molehills in the easy parts and leaves out the hard parts. How did they write so many pages about text parsing? The books by Appel and Louden (forgot the names) are good.