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It's easy to write a compiler. I understand that writing a good compiler is somewhat more difficult.
by Eliezer 18y ago
It's easy to write a compiler.
I understand that writing a good compiler is somewhat more difficult.
- akeefer 18y agoIndeed . . . as someone who works with an in-house language, I can affirm that the ratio of time we've spent on the initial parse/compile steps to the time spent on things like error reporting and optimization is probably approaching 1:100 at this point.
- michaelneale 18y agoI find the error reporting the hardest thing. And a lot of "tips and techniques" kind of neglect that you actually may have syntax errors and need to report them to the user in a helpful way.
- jwilliams 18y ago> writing a good compiler is somewhat more difficult Also depends on how you define what's good. You might want a compiler to give good CPU performance, memory, code size, debugging information, robustness, start-up speed, etc. Some of these can be difficult - any combination is even more difficult again.
- jey 18y agoI think the post is pointing out that there's less magic involved in writing a compiler than one may initially think.