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Comment by nemesisrobot | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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