Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text?

Alain Ketterlin <alain@nospam.dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr> wrote


> compilers@is-not-my.name writes:
>
> > Guys, I'm having a bear of a time finding a good practical language
> > and OS agnostic text on writing a compiler. I'm weak in math and not
> > interested in the theoretical details. I want to understand the hows
> > and whys of compiler writing. [...]
>
> First, don't expect to understand much of compilation without at least
> some background in discrete maths (some basic language theory, but
> also graph theory if you go down later stages), and of course
> algorithmics and programming.


Discrete maths!? I don't even know what that is.


> Second, don't think compilation is all about language theory. For
> instance, control-flow analysis is heavy on graph traversals, code
> generation may use subtle algorithmics (e.g., dynamic programming), etc.
> And optimization techniques may use whatever will provide a suitable
> model (some loop optimizations make heavy use of linear algebra).


Yeah but like anything else now that you smart mathematicians have worked
all that out, can't we use what you know without fully understanding it? Is
it unreasonable to explain what to do in an algorithmic way without needing
for the reader to understand the theoretical background? Otherwise it smacks
of having to reinvent the research wheel to do a project like this.


> OK, now my suggestion: "Modern Compiler Implementation", by Andrew
> Appel, which imho has the perfect balance between theory and
> implementation. You are allowed to choose the implementation language:
> the book exists in C, Java, and ML versions.


I don't know or use any of those languages so I suppose it won't help me
very much but I'll see if I can look over the book anyway. Thank you.

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