Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by nemesisrobot 4146 days ago
The author says he turned to Coursera, but doesn't mention the course(s) he took, but I'm going to guess it's the the 'Compilers' class from Stanford[0]. I've heard good things about the course and the lecturer (Alex Aiken) so I really wanted to take the course while it was being offered but was too busy last year. I hope they offer it again this year.

https://www.coursera.org/course/compilers

6 comments

I did this class. It is quite challenging (and rewarding). If you plan to do it make sure to allocate a significant amount of time per week. My recommendation would be to do the Java version of the assignments over the C++ version, even if you know C++. The codebase provided is pretty crufty.
A self-paced version of that course is (still) available now:

https://class.stanford.edu/courses/Engineering/Compilers/Fal...

Yeah, that course is awesome. I also took it in order to properly learn about compilers for my language design/compiler side project. I wrote about the experience here:

https://dirkjan.ochtman.nl/writing/2012/07/21/compilers-on-c...

Afterwards, I thoroughly overhauled my nascent compiler. It currently lives here:

https://github.com/djc/runa/

(It's a Python-like systems language, with a compiler written in Python targeting LLVM IR.)

This is excellent: I recently worked through this class (at my own pace: you can register for past offerings). I made things a little harder than necessary by eschewing the provided framework code and writing everything myself, in go.

I found SPIM super-annoying, but managed to resist the temptation to build a better MIPS emulator. :-)

Highly recommend: writing a (very simple) compiler is no longer a black-art-seeming thing to me.

Oh, http://github.com/zellyn/gocool: I recommend you steal my tests (bash, sorry!) but avoid cheating too much on the actual meat of the exercises :-)
Thank you for this; cloning it now
I was able to only participate in a small amount of it, and came away with significant value in increased understanding.
I've listened to the lectures and they're awesome! he is a very good lecturer.