[_RPM]

I saw the matrix after I first implemented a virtual machine. I recommend everyone does it because it will teach you a lot about how code is executed and transformed from the syntax to the actual assembly/bytecode. A stack based virtual machine is so simple it takes a lot of thinking to understand how they work. (or maybe I'm just not that smart).

It's interesting that he implemented function calls via a jump. In my VM a function is just mapped to a name (variable), so functions are first class. When the VM gets to a CALL instruction, it loads the bytecode from the hash table (via a lookup of the name).

Since this is a procedural language where statements can be executed outside of a function, implementing the functions as a jump would be difficult because there would need to be multiple jumps between the function definition and statements that aren't in a function.

I really wish my CS program had a compilers class, but unfortunately they don't, so I had to learn everything on my own.

[chii]

A CS education is incomplete without a semester on writing a simple compiler, and a corresponding emulator for the output for said compiler.

[zeveb]

I think I agree. I really wish that I'd been walked through The Right Way (or just A Right Way) to write a compiler and bytecode interpreter by a professor. Oh well, it's fun to learn on my own!

[_RPM]

Sure. That's why I did it on my own.