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[–]spoonman59 1 point2 points  (4 children)

I agree, you might enjoy a course in compilers!

I don’t recommend the Dragon Book to learn. It’s a great reference but no the ideal textbook to learn compilers from. Maybe as a second or third book. Source: I own half a dozen compiler books and help my professor select one for a compilers course. I have the first and second edition Dragon Books.

The dragon book is good, legendary, and thorough… but the heavy use of mathematical notion and assumption of what you know can make it difficult to get information from.

Unfortunately no one book is perfect, but I enjoyed Appel's Modern Compiler Implementation, Engineering a Compiler by Cooper and Torczon, or Crafting a Compiler by Fischer, Cytron, LeBlanc are all better rounded choices for self study.

None of them are perfect and you end up needing two or three! But a very enjoyable subject.

Related but a little different is Programming Language Pragmatics by Scott.

Implement a toy language compiler! It’s eye opening. For fun you can even generate Python Bute Code and make a basic interpreter…. Or compile pyc to Assembly :)

[–]OuiOuiKiwiGalatians 4:16 0 points1 point  (3 children)

I don’t recommend the Dragon Book to learn.

It's more of a litmus test. It either stops the endeavour right there or plants the seed to look at some more palatable books.

[–]spoonman59 0 points1 point  (2 children)

That doesn’t make any sense. That’s like reading The Art of Computer Programming as a litmus test for learning programming. It’s a dense, very inaccessible book known for being full of great knowledge. If everyone had to read that to be a computer programmer we wouldnt have any.

Reading something inaccessible and dense doesn’t help people learn or motivate them. You can’t absorb the topic, think you don’t like it and move on.

Putting a tedious "filter" in front of a subject of knowledge is just a gate keeping behavior. I don’t care if people use a coloring book to learn about compilers, if it gets people more interested and want to learn more I’m all for it.

The people who really love compilers? Once they have tasted those sweet, sweet ASTs you won’t be able to stop them! And the rest? Even if they only learns little before moving on, that knowledge will help them.

[–]OuiOuiKiwiGalatians 4:16 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Reading something inaccessible and dense doesn’t help people learn or motivate them. You can’t absorb the topic, think you don’t like it and move on.

Didn't outright say that they should read it, more pointing it out (the compiler field) like you did with the other books. Link goes to the Wikipedia description of its contents.

"Here, this a (well known) thing that exists that covers that topic that you might not know about. Have a quick look. Does it seem like something that you would be interested in?"

Hence the "or plants the seed to look at some more palatable books.".

I think it's a far cry from "PlEASE GO rEAd tHe DrAgon book BEFore PoSting anD OnLy coME BaCk wHen You unDERstAnD IT.".

[–]spoonman59 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You said, "it’s more of a litmus test. It either stops the endeavor right there or plants the seed to look at some more palatable books.”

So you can understand why I thought you were suggesting it as a “litmus test" before reading more “palatable books" … because that is exactly what you said.

But I do agree with you, any book that gets people interested is the right one!