Re: compiler writing as a career?

Randy Crawford <rand@rice.edu> writes:


> Unlike Brandon, I'm interested in compiler career opportunities of all
> kinds.
>
> But I've long wondered what happens to a compiler writer *after* the
> compiler is built? Clearly a great deal of work goes into creating or
> even porting a compiler, perhaps requiring several folks to build the
> tool in a reasonable amount of time. But once the tool is
> serviceable, what becomes of its creators? Do they usually move
> straight into maintenance of the tool, or start building another
> compiler for the same firm, or do they have to change jobs yet again?
>
> I'm sure that if you work for one of the handful of compiler vendors out
> there, you can afford to buy a house and settle down. But if most
> compiler work is in supporting new processors or embedded hardware, it
> seems to me that few of those employers would be inclined to keep on a
> permanent compiler guy/gal after the compiler for the system is done.
> So most compiler work sounds like it's transient.
>
> Is that so? Are compiler builders inevitably high-tech nomads?


It's not quite that bad. You've probably heard the expression, the
last 10% of the work takes 90% of the time -- and that's definitely
true for compilers. Even after you've implemented all the well-known
optimization passes, it seems like there are always places where you
can squeeze a few percent more in terms of speed or code size or both,
but it gets harder and harder to do and requires more and more complex
and sophisticated program analysis techniques and lots of attention to
the way different compiler passes interact with each other. Plus,
there are new processors coming out all the time, so there is a lot of
work in retargeting existing compilers. Sometimes you need to add new
language features to the front end to support programmer access to
some weird features of the new hardware or for compatibility with
somebody else's compiler. Occasionally you might even have demand for
a new front end for some other language (say, adding Fortran or Java
to a compiler that started out as C or C++). End result is, I don't
know anybody who migrates around doing a new compiler from scratch
every few years, as you seem to suggest.


-Sandra
http://www.frogsonice.com/resume.html
[My rule of thumb is that the first 90% of the work takes the first
90% of the time, and the other 90% of the work takes the other 90%
of the time. -John]

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