Re: Paper: Developing a Modular Compiler for a Subset of a C-like Language

On Thu, 23 Jan 2025 20:49:51 -0500, OrangeFish
<OrangeFish@invalid.invalid> wrote:


>I was suggesting Wirth to answer Salvador Misro's request for "Would you
>recommend an equivalent paper or book that addresses these short-comings
>but maintains the educational spirit of the paper?".
>
>Is Wirth (in any version) suitable?


Wirth's books are fine for dipping your toes in the ocean of language
implementation. They are pretty well written and they cover the
entire compiler from parsing to code generation.


However, they are undergrad level at best - I have yet to see Wirth
demonstrates any significant optimizations [middle or back end], or
any attempt at implementing a functional language. SFAIHS, everything
he has written has been about either procedural or OO implementation.


[My impression is that the largest difference between old compiler books
and the state of the art is that optimization and the analysis that enables
it has gotten vastly more sophisticated. Back when the Dragon Book was first
written, compilers often had to fit in 64K and if you wanted to keep the
intermediate code in memory, you couldn't compile very big programs. -John]

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