meadori

> is to compile down to an emulation of a straightforward machine (I really like MSP430 for this)

What exactly do you mean by this? Direct object code emission?

> the emulator is easier than the compiler, by a lot

Yeah, definite +1 there. For most simple machines it really is not much more than a loop with a switch on the opcode where the cases update the CPU state.

I don't really know, but I would be suprised if that is the intent of the project because:

  1. The maintainer of llgo is a Google employee (and a very talented LLVM engineer).

  2. I don't imagine there would be tremendous differences in the strategies used to generate LLVM IR between the tools.  ISTM, if there are deficiencies in llgo, then it would be better to fix them rather than creating a whole new tool.

I am somewhat confused by this. The LLVM project already has an official Go frontend that lowers to LLVM IR:

* https://llvm.org/svn/llvm-project/llgo/trunk/README.TXT

I had a similar POV as well -- I went into reading this book thinking there would be exercises and projects to reinforce the ideas. In particular, the following sentence (and remaining paragraph) in Chapter 1 set me up for that:

  > The exercises accompanying this book focus on teaching cryptography by breaking inferior systems.

I feel like I am one of these people too. However, sometimes it seems really stressful (for me at least). I feel the pull of too many directions. Given such varied interests, how do you stay productive and get things done?

Sometimes I feel like my life would be much easier if I could just focus on one or a small few things :-)

Definitely an amazing person. Folks tend to primarily focus on his contributions to the PC ecosystem. I am surprised more don't mention his work on data-flow analysis. It was such a significant contribution to the compiler world.

Having owned and read through "Introduction to Algorithms" for years I agree that it is a good book. However, recently I have been feeling like it is recommended way too often without thought.

It is not the best when it comes to explaining things in an intuitive manner. It is a great reference book with lots of algorithms and proofs.

In recent years I have been drawn more towards Levitin's "Introduction to the Design and Analysis of Algorithms".

Anyone else have similar feelings about "Introduction to Algorithms"?

I enjoyed this presentation by Allison Kaptur on how to understand CPython better:

http://pyvideo.org/video/3465/exploring-is-never-boring-unde...

While it is focused on CPython, most of the techniques are applicable elsewhere. It also mentions a great article by Peter Seibel (http://www.gigamonkeys.com/code-reading/) that discusses why we don't often read code in the same way we would literature.

Essentially, as the complexity of software has grown people have been forced to take a more experimental approach to understand software even though it was created by other people.