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Comment by qwertyuiop924 | Hacker News Reader

>When I see a compiler I just think "pfft, tokenizer, lexer, tree". When they see a compiler they think "I could never understand this in my life".

To be fair, they're probably more correct in this context. Even if you understand the basics of compilation (and by the way, if you're reading this comment and you don't have a basic understanding of how compilation works, you should go learn that. Like, right now, if you can) the chance of you actually understanding the entirety of GCC and/or Clang without taking three years to study them is pretty slim, AFAICT.

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The exercise isn't to put you ahead of everyone else. It is to get you to see where everyone else came from.

I could try and run a marathon but I'm very out of shape. One of my friends can try and run a marathon who isn't out of shape and while they won't win they can still do it and learn from the experiance. The goal isn't to win, it's to learn in this case.

That wasn't my point. My point is, even if you know the theory behind compilers, and maybe have written a few yourself, you probably will have difficulty understanding GCC, Clang, or another production compiler unless you've done work with such a compiler before.

That is, your friends' awe of the compiler is not only justified given their skill level, it's also likely justified at your skill level as well (although as I don't know you personally, I can't say for sure).

The awe you're describing and the "awe" of his friends are very different, AFAICT. What you describe is perfectly healthy and reasonable: GCC/etc are unquestionably complex systems that can't be fully understood without thorough long-term study and experience. Oversimplifying them would be reckless, and so the average user of them should possess a certain awe and respect for them.

But this is different from having no conception of how compilers work and how one might implement one. As complex as modern compilers are, the foundational principles still apply to them, and an understanding of these principles makes them much less awe-inspiring. I think that having a clear view of the big picture, rather than having certain areas of the picture blocked off entirely as magical black boxes, allows for better engineering choices.

I agree. So I suppose that awe is a bit different.

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