
Writing compilers and interpreters
by Ronald Mak · first published 1991
7mentions
4recommended by
7HN commenters
2010–2022first – last mentioned
57% recommend43% neutral
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This is a great book, although before you get started with this one, I would recommend this other one for a quick hands-on intro to compilers and interpreters: "Writing Compilers and Interpreters: A Software Engineering Approach, 3rd Edition," by Ronald Mak. If you've never had much guidance on the subject, writing a compiler for "The Elements of computing systems" could take an unnecessarily…
on “Ask HN: What if I missed the good stuff in my undergraduate education?” ↗I already answered about "The Art of the Metaobject Protocol" but then two more language-implementation-centric books came to mind today. 1. "Writing Compilers and Interpreters" by Ronald Mak 2. "Building an Optimizing Compiler" by Bob Morgan Morgan's book is well sought after and out of print. It's one of the few books in the field for which the print edition prices keep climbing.
on “Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?” ↗I learnt a lot from the book 'Writing Compilers and Interpreters' by Ronald Mak. I have the original edition of the book, which is C++ based (building a language that compiles to x86 assembly), but I see on googling that there is a newer edition that is Java-based,…
on “Ask HN: Good Resources to Learn and Implement a Parser (Compiler)” ↗"This is an excellent book on Lisp implementation. You'll get a lot out of it, whether you are interested in writing compilers and interpreters (for Lisp or any language) or whether you just want to see how Lisp works. It is the modern day successor to Allen's "Anatomy of Lisp"." Peter Norvig
on “Lisp in Small Pieces: Table of Contents and Code” ↗…to Designing Compilers, Interpreters, and DSLs for Solving Modern Computing Problems. I don't know anything about this one, but people have told me they prefer the first edition: 6. Ronald Mak. 1991. Writing Compilers and Interpreters: An Applied Approach.
on “Crafting Interpreters: A Review” ↗I'm not conflating anything, as far as I'm aware. The question was: "the art of writing compilers and interpreters has effectively been lost" I'm curious, how does that happen? Were the techniques used in compilers and interpreters of yore never recorded for posterity in academic papers or technical documentation?…
on “Miranda released as free software” ↗A quick search on Amazon gives: Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools Engineering a Compiler, Second Edition Writing Compilers and Interpreters: A Software Engineering Approach Compiler Construction: Principles and Practice Compilers: Principles and Practice Language Implementation Patterns Crafting a Compiler with C Compiler Design in C…
on “The most mentioned books on Stack Overflow” ↗