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Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

I really want to be able to wrap my head around compilers but I'm not sure what a good "user friendly" resource is that wont stuff lots of fancy compiler buzzwords in my face and become white noise to me.

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I would recommend "Compiler Construction" by Niklaus Wirth. This small book (< 200 pages) will teach you the basics and show you how to build a single-pass compiler for a subset of Oberon (a Pascal successor).

The book is freely available here: http://people.inf.ethz.ch/wirth/CompilerConstruction/index.h...

For a more comprehensive example, you can have a look at my compiler for the full Oberon language targeting the JVM. It is based on the principles of that book: https://github.com/lboasso/oberonc

I second the recommendation. Wirth's compiler book is a wonderful, concise and very readable introduction.

Start simple. If you haven't written an interpreter, do that first. Then figure out how to write a similar program that emits code for a virtual machine rather than evaluating the language.

I'd keep an eye on http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/contents.html, although it hasn't gotten to compilation yet (I think).

I'm actually trying to write an easy-to-digest compiler and companion reading series. It's for a compilers independent study class. You can track my progress here: https://github.com/tekknolagi/tigress

At this point it's not well-documented, but the layers are numbered in order: l00, l01, l02... Each builds on top of the previous one.

EDIT: I just added a mini evaluator for debugging purposes and so people can see what the language is like.

Lisp In Small Pieces would be my reccomendation. A relatively small book that takes you through writing 11 interpreters and 2 compilers.

Is it really that friendly when starting out, though? I found it brilliant, but quite the challenging read. I'd rather just read chapters four and five of SICP [1] and move on to Queinnec as a follow-up on more advanced topics.

[1]: The book is free as well: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-4.html...

To be honest, I found LISP to be a lot easier than SICP, but that's probably just some learning styles stuff at play.

SICP being freely available in both book form, and the lectures [0] makes it one of the best resources out there.

(I just never found it's section on compilers that helpful. Again, probably learning styles.)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB63C06FAF154F047

Maybe I need to reread LISP, then. I agree that SICP is laser-focused on Scheme, and thus leaves out general compilation techniques.

This isn't about wrapping one's head around a compiler, but I thought you might find it useful. https://medium.freecodecamp.org/the-programming-language-pip...

I enjoyed this read because it was a very user-friendly overview. After reading, I knew exactly what major pieces did what and therefore what to search for next on my own terms.

I'm writing my first compiler now, and it's been quite a learning curve. I've also realized how much nicer my language is for writing compilers than the language in which I'm implementing the compiler. That made me realize I could write the compiler in my language and then write an interpreter for my language which would only need to run once--to generate the compiler--after which point my compiler would be self-hosting. :p

Do you mind sharing some of the resources you're using to learn? Book titles or URLs?

I haven't looked at any resources in particular. Basically my compiler has 3 parts--parser -> type checker -> code generation. Parsing was tricky at first, but then I stumbled upon a pattern which is pretty close to parser-combinators. Type checking seemed daunting, but my language happened to be Hindley-Milner compatible, and there's lots of reference information for HM. Code generation is easy in the base case, but I'm still wrapping my mind around template expansion.

I wrote https://codewords.recurse.com/issues/seven/dragon-taming-wit... about a tutorial-level compiler written in itself. Of course, a recommendation from someone who's learned from it instead of from the author would give a better signal.

I also recommended the same Wirth book as lboasso, and a couple other books, down at the bottom of the page.

that wont stuff lots of fancy compiler buzzwords in my face and become white noise to me.

Crenshaw's tutorial fits this perfectly: https://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/

x86 version here: http://www.pp4s.co.uk/main/tu-trans-comp-jc-intro.html

I think Wirth's compiler book is more approachable for a beginner. Once you are done with that book you can also read "Project Oberon" from the same author. This way you can understand the implementation of a full graphical OS written from scratch for a custom made RISC processor implemented on a FPGA. The book and source code are available at: http://www-oldurls.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/

Stanford Lagunita has Stanford's Compilers course available for free, with the usual undergraduate prerequisites.

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