Imagesource: https://unsplash.com/

Compiler construction is not necessarily one of the favorite disciplines of most CS students. On the other hand, you only really fully understand the functionality of the machines, we love so much, once you've put together your very own compiler.

Lex and yacc ... what memories 😵‍💫.

Yair Haimovitch also known as @yairhaimo approaches the subject from a completely new angle. In his browser-based tutorial, he gives a basic but structured and very clear introduction to the topic. The reader builds a compiler, that translates a subset of Lisp to Javascript. The usefulness of this in production is completely left aside, but if you replace Lisp with X and Javascript with Assembly, you are only one assembler and linker step away from executable binary of your own language.

The whole project is based on Javascript, which is also used for the implementation of the compiler in the interactive examples.

Great lecture. Should be something for anyone who has always been asleep in "compiler construction“, or just fancies the subject. (Who does not? 🤓)