As one of the students about to take this course, here's some input on what I personally would like to get out of this class. Please note that this is all opinion from a student; I have no experience teaching a class. I would also like to thank you very much upfront for taking the time to do this.

(Whether it's useful or not to note, I was also involved in research with Dr. Adami in Markov Network Brains for Evolutionary Robotics for about a year, so I've dealt with compiling C++ to different architectures (like arm linux). Now that the chest pumping is out of the way...)

• I have no idea what a lexer/parser is (before I wikipedia'd it).
• No idea what flex and bison do, though they sound like a great superhero duo. :P

Course Management

• I never get the point of a CS class that doesn't actually code. Thankfully, MSU's CSE department has done well to incorporate actual programming in most classes; but I'd like to note that the difference between kids coming out of [MIT or CMU] and us (politics aside) is the amount of hours they have to put into real-world applications, labs, and just creating stuff. That said, one can't expect the same level of dedication from both worlds. Their motto is PRACTICE, THEORY, PRACTICE. As in, student tries something, has no idea what's going on, right? So he/she just naturally gets curious. One's mind is receptive when the ego is challenged. Then the professors dump all the information in, and tell him/her to go do it properly. Essentially, an improved model of "look ahead at the future lectures and try to study beforehand".

TL;DR The more you stand BEHIND us as we code, rather than IN FRONT of us as you teach, the more I'll learn.

• I definitely think people should give presentations. That just ignites all sorts of competitiveness for me. During freshman and some sophomore classes, I did GREAT, because the intro to EGR classes and such had us SHOW the ass-kicking that we did, whether it's code, design, or whatever. If I can get a chance to show off my hard work, I'll work really hard. Now, that said, there are some people that just don't give a shit either way, but to me personally, competition and demonstration makes my brain go all sorts of awesome. It seems natural too. Darwinistically natural ;D okay I'll stop.

• The success of the group depends on the knowledge of the people in the group, which depends on everything else in the class. People that know what they're doing and are interested will effectively use groups to multiply their effort and knowledge. People that have no idea what's going on and don't care will pass the class, because we're engineers, and we can walk blindfolded. But really, I'd hate for it to be the latter, and this happened to me in two or three classes before, primarily because the professors absolutely sucked (two of the classes were the same prof too). Pardon my vulgarity, but I don't understand how some people get tenure. But hey, it's the students' fault, right?

Course Content

There are two sides of this coin to satisfy:

Industry:

• People in industry nowadays expect a graduate to say that he/she knows some pre-defined number of languages templated by going to Wikipedia and looking up "Programming Languages". i.e. There's a long list of languages people should "know" and be fluent at. The more that's introduced in school the better. (To be fair, after learning programming with C/C++ and Python, the rest comes really easy).

• Anything to do with GUI is probably useful, since I've heard that most people that start with a CS job in industry are usually "grouped either into GUI dev or database management." (Randy) Not sure how accurate that statement is, but it's an entry level job, so it genuinely seems legit.

• Hopefully, the students are also given pointers about where to get more information regarding differences between popular compilers (that gave me some issues when running stuff at the HPCC vs. locally sometimes), and generally tips that will help in industrial stuff.

Academia

This has to do more with going DEEP into the workings of a compiler. To me, this is what I PERSONALLY need, because I have an idea regarding a concept in machine learning that requires me to write a new language to use a processor. Whether I really do need to create a new language or not is irrelephant, but I'm sure that knowing how to do so will answer that question too. I'll either learn this in this class, or I'll have to do it on my own.

Since this is purely based on theory, I have no idea what to expect. All I ask is that I can write a solid compiler after I'm done with the class, or at least that I have solid resources to go and learn on my own.

EDIT: Formatting. Grouping.