I was T.A. for COMP-520, Compiler Design, at McGill University for two years, and it was the best job I've ever had. The compiler project had not been updated in 10-12 years; my adviser trusted me to make a new, interesting project. I was paid by the department for 5 hours of work per week, but I poured in more than 35 per week to design, document, and implement a subset of Go

My hard work paid off immediately. Students were more interested by a language that was new, modern, and used in the industry than by the previous language that was used, Wig. As a result, enrollment jumped from 12-14 students to 45. Though it was a subset, and much of what makes Go interesting was removed (concurrency, interfaces, GC) it was still an extremely demanding project. Many times I thought that the project was too big, that we needed to cut back, but the students were real troopers and chugged through (by the way, when did 20-year olds become so smart?! I was never this bright when I was their age!) and all teams completed the project and made me very proud.

You can see the page for the first year of the class, along with relevant documents at http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~cs520/2015/