Anthony Pace wrote:
It is not that I don't want to write code for flash anymore; it is just
that I am interested in expanding my horizons.
In some ways writing a compiler is shortening your horizons - most
likely you'll tire of the project or just be the only one to use the end
result. That said, treating compiler design as a hobby (like doing
crosswords) it can be fun. I had a stint along this road MANY years ago
with a foray into small-c compilers on home micros. I stopped after
producing a port of a small-c compiler to a bytecode and then having to
write the byte code interpreter runtime environment (which I wrote using
interpreted BCPL and BASIC). So as a doubly interpreted language running
on an 8 bit micro, it ran like a dog. It was a fun project that took up
a huge amount of time and was of little absolute worth. I also spent
some time trying to write an assembler for the MC68000 and that was
quite fun too (where did those old books go?)
So my suggestion would be to really focus on what you want out of the
project (and indeed why you want to write a compiler at all), otherwise
you'll never get to an end. Contributing to an opensource project with a
compiling component might cure you!
All that said, I did recently consider an application where it would
have been good to allow use of custom actionscript - compiled into the
project, to drive the application template, but it sounds like a ton of
work.
Whatever you do good luck.
Paul
Can anyone recommend a good mailing list for compiler design for newbies?
I have books on it, and I know the basics of how to perform tokenization
and lexical analysis; yet, even with study and practise, I am most
likely going to be considering myself a newbie in the compiler design
realm for at least a few years. Keep in mind that my assembly is very
rudimentary, and my machine code is even worse (having never actually
taken a compiler design class).
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