Re: Having trouble finding texts on compiler construction.

Ray Dillinger wrote:


> Ryan McCoskrie <ryan.mccoskrie@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> I'm trying to find some good text on compiler construction that don't
>> explain things in terms of visual information (trees etcetera) and
>> maths(which boils down to processing visual information).
>
> Boy, math is so utterly fundamental to my comprehension of the subject
> that I can't imagine explaining it without math.
>
> But math is also "Language" rather than "Image", at least as I experience
> it. It took me a few moments to think of why you might experience it as
> image. I'm guessing that you're having trouble with mathematical
> notation?
>
> Do you have trouble with the mathematical notation being too "visual"
> with respect to operations expressed by the relative locations and sizes
> of terms? If that's the case would rewriting it with some kind of
> text-based linear syntax (as in a programming language) help you?


The expression of maths is done in a language like manner even if it
isn't nearly as clear as it should be. But at least from the age of
the Greek philosophers there has been a preoccupation with geometry
that permeates the field. Calculus is a very obvious example but the
way my teacher in high school explained statistics was all lines and
grids as well.


The underlying reason to this (or at least one of them) is that the
visual regions of the brain are used as a temporary buffer when doing
things as simple as arithmetic.


I tried doing a heap of multiplications in my head without forgetting
how I got to the current equation once (twice three, twice six... or
some such) and I could actually feel the interrupt when realloc failed
in my head. That's what it was like anyway.




I can follow pretty algorithms in pretty much anything Fortran-esque
so long as I know _why_ things are the way they are and I'm begining
to get my head around Lisp (though I had to find my own syntax orientated
way to learn it).




So yes linear syntax helps a great deal but the real issue is the approach
to all of this.


--
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An adequate bootstrap is a contradiction in terms.

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