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Comment by Arisaka1 | Hacker News Reader

Curious question from someone new to the programming field who lacks a formal CS background: How are books like this one are meant to be consumed? Do you read it cover to cover as you code along with the author in a way YouTube tutorials work?

The main reason for asking is, I don't know if I'm lacking in natural gifts (really likely) but I can't seem to retain knowledge like that. It feels nice to onboard myself to a language or framework by doing so, but afterwards I will still struggle to connect pieces together.

I'm interested to learn more on how language interpreters work, I just don't know if the format is something that will assist me. I'm trying to compliment and assist my brain with note taking after reading the note taking thread that is currently in the front page, so perhaps that will change.

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This book is intended to be a cover to cover job. I tackled it about 2 or 3 chapters at a time while building alongside. But after the midway point where it swaps to a C based byte code compiler I just read it instead.

There are books like the dragon book which cover PL design in a more reference book style. But I don’t recommend them.

If you’re looking for a lighter alternative then “writing an Interpreter in Go” is worth a look.

Also Bob Nystrum has some other good material on his blog, and a chapter in game programming patterns about PL stuff.

> Also Bob Nystrum has some other good material on his blog, and a chapter in game programming patterns about PL stuff.

Links:

https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/

https://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/bytecode.html

For this book, that is absolutely what you should do. It starts you off building a simple parser and interpreter, and then has you add features to both as you progress through the book. Skipping sections can mean that you end up missing functionality you might need.

Well, in the instance of this book, you should follow along with the steps that Bob Nystrom writes for you. From reading it, it’s clear you’re supposed to follow along and write code “with him”. He even outlines exactly where each line of code should go, and explains why along the way.

This book, unlike the infamous “Dragon Book” for compilers, can be read cover to cover. The Dragon Book has great detail but it is a slog, especially in early chapters. So many students drop their first course on compilers every year because of the Dragon Book and not the actual concepts

Im my experience following - as in actually doing the steps - works wonders.

Start at 1st chapter, try all the codes until you understand the concept. Then go to next chapter and repeat the process.

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