Aye but these lads are building a compiler. Probably shouldn't hide things like 'memory management' at the introduction stage as use of memory is inherent to all computing and programming.
> Sure, that makes sense, but you can write a compiler in languages that don't require it themselves.
I don't follow your rationale. With C the developer manages heap memory by basically calling malloc and free.
This means that once you have the memory model set, all you need to do to roll your compiler is to implement the interface.
A language that "don't require it themselves" is a language which provides only high level constructs and dumps all the memory management logic to the compiler/runtime, from object allocation/deallocation to lifetime management.
How is that simpler to pull off by a compiler writer?
The target language generally has nothing to do with the language of the compiler, where automatic memory management is just as useful (and also helps to minimize the amount of unrelated technical detail) as anywhere else.
Manual memory management is optional. IIRC some version of the D compiler was written assuming an infinite virtual address space (basically they just did not bother calling free() ever)!
There's a chapter in the book dedicated to memory layout of programs that discusses program segments, paging, implementation of malloc/free, etc that is more or less required before getting to the assembler and codegen stages.
Even if you can write a compiler assuming infinite memory that generates programs that also assume it, it would be a disservice to readers to ignore that for brevity. It's an important part of understanding how programs are created.