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Most compilers don’t work anything like the Dragon book describes. It’s interesting as an historical artefact but not a reference book.
by chrisseaton 4y ago
Most compilers don’t work anything like the Dragon book describes. It’s interesting as an historical artefact but not a reference book.
- pjmlp 4y agoIn fact, even though it is an oldie by now, the Tiger book provides much better overview of how to write a compiler, end to end. https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/modern/ https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~appel/modern/
- avgcorrection 4y agoEven though? It is much younger than the Dragon Book, as you know.
- pjmlp 4y agoSome would discard it given its age, even so.
- vkazanov 4y agoThe dragon book saw multiple revisions. The authors always stayed on the theoretical, almost detached, side of things. Most of the deeper material is dedicated to things closer to theory of computation than practical compiler building. Practical stuff is shallow at best. The tiger book, otoh, does a great job of leading the reader all the way from high level stuff to a realistic functional language compiler. And Appel, by the way, is a great technical writer - even his whitepapers are a pleasure to read. I have great respect for dragon book authors but... their writing un the book and elsewhere is not a pinnacle of clarity.