education-2022/articles/compilers.md

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# Compilers: How To Make a Programming Language
Other compiler-related topics out of scope:
- What are programs anyway (Forth, LISP)
- Computation: Turing machines, lambda calculus
- Compiler optimization
- GC (motivated by LISP)
aesthetics:
- stay motivated; stick close to a c-like, imperative, procedural model because that's what people are used to
motivation / goals / what questions are we trying to answer:
- I want to be able to make a toy procedural language.
- like C, Algol, JS, Lua, etc.
- possible user motivations:
- I want to make a game scripting language
- I want to make a DSL for my job (and I want syntax highlighting!)
- I want to do simple static analysis of my projects
ok what do we want to cover
- classical compiler structure (lexer -> parser -> codegen)
- semantic analysis / type checking
- modern compiler structures (IR / SSA, optimization)
- interpreters vs. JITs vs. AOTs vs. "transpilers"
- executables and linkers
- regular expressions?
- regular languages / grammars / language structure / automata
the c compilation process
- translation units
- preprocessing -> (the whole compilation process) -> object files -> linking
- c compilation model is not in favor any more, don't like compiling all these files separately
- ABIs and FFI
- should maybe be in separate article
experts / consultants:
- Bill
- NeGate
## The actual progression
- Simple expression interpreter (parse and evaluate)
- Classical compiler construction (lex -> parse -> output), semantic analysis / type checking
- motivation: complex structures! recursion! etc.
- many of these resources exist and cover different aspects of the process in different ways
- Grammars and language structure
- Types of output (interpreter vs. AOT vs. JIT, etc.)
- We can probably find resources on specific ones of these
- Modern phases (IR / SSA)
- Mention WASM?
- The terrors of the real world
- Executables, linkers, and debug info
- The C ABI and FFI
- Register allocation
- C is not the only language
- LISP
- Forth
- This could be a whole topic maybe
## Link dump
- lua grammar: http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaGrammar
- pascal railroad diagrams: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/novak/grammar.html
- tons of links: https://github.com/aalhour/awesome-compilers
- dragon book: http://ce.sharif.edu/courses/94-95/1/ce414-2/resources/root/Text%20Books/Compiler%20Design/Alfred%20V.%20Aho,%20Monica%20S.%20Lam,%20Ravi%20Sethi,%20Jeffrey%20D.%20Ullman-Compilers%20-%20Principles,%20Techniques,%20and%20Tools-Pearson_Addison%20Wesley%20(2006).pdf
- expression parsing examples:
- pratt parsing and recursive descent: https://journal.stuffwithstuff.com/2011/03/19/pratt-parsers-expression-parsing-made-easy/
- dunno, not recursive descent: https://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/nelson/courses/csc_173/grammars/parsing.html
- gary bernhardt's compiler from scratch: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/screencasts/catalog/a-compiler-from-scratch
- lambda calculus interpreter: https://justine.lol/lambda/