Re: [racket-users] compiler books

2020-11-27 Thread 'John Clements' via Racket Users 
If you’re specifically interested in 

1) Compilers, and
2) Racket,

I think it’s hard to do better than Jeremy Siek’s Essentials of Compilation. He 
comes from the Indiana group, as, indirectly, does just about everything around 
here, and his approach is very closely related to Dybvig/Chez, including a 
nanopass architecture. Shout-outs also to Andy Keep and Abdulaziz Ghuloum, who 
did a lot of work related to this.

Here’s the link to the most recent course web page:

https://iucompilercourse.github.io/IU-P423-P523-E313-E513-Fall-2020/

… including a link to the book.

I would also be remiss in not mentioning Ben Lerner’s NU compilers course, for 
which lecture notes are online:

https://course.ccs.neu.edu/cs4410sp20/#%28part._lectures%29

And finally, I want to take a brief moment to impugn the Dragon Book; the last 
time I checked, I thought that it represented a very outdated approach to 
writing a compiler. I’m probably biased, but if you want a heavy book on 
low-level programming, I would go for Keith Cooper’s Compilers book. Jeremy 
Siek’s book, by contrast, is free, describes how to implement high-level 
languages such as Racket, and does not contain an encyclopedic discussion of 
low-level optimization.

Everything here is just my opinion, of course!

John

> On Nov 27, 2020, at 15:42, Tim Meehan  wrote:
> 
> Hendrik - sorry for misspelling your name 😱.
> 
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 5:41 PM Tim Meehan  wrote:
> Thanks for the links, Hendrick and Matt!
> The holidays gave me some time to learn about things that I had put on the 
> back burner all year, so this is great timing.
> 
> 
> 
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 2:57 PM Matt Jadud  wrote:
> 
> 
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 12:40 PM Hendrik Boom  wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 09:46:21AM -0600, Tim Meehan wrote:
> I found a book by Dick Grune et al to be somewhat lighter than the dragon 
> book.  Looking online, I discoered I was thinking of the first edition.  I 
> haven't seen the second edition, but I'd guess the second edition would be 
> similar, though it has rather more material:
> 
> https://dickgrune.com/Books/MCD_1st_Edition/
> https://dickgrune.com/Books/MCD_2nd_Edition/
> 
> When I saw the first edition, I decided that if I were teaching an 
> introductory course in compilers, I would use it as textbook.
> 
> 
> I've been fond of 
> 
> https://www.nand2tetris.org/ 
> 
> for a while as a "soup to nuts" overview of computation from the NAND gate up 
> through a simple computer, a simplified assembly language, assembler, 
> compiler, VM, and so on. It's not an advanced text, but it does provide a 
> hands-on bottom-to-top view of the computational world that can help orient 
> someone who is exploring the space.
> 
> It's also why I keep wondering when I'm going to break down and pick up a 
> little FPGA board for myself and just play. :)
> 
> Cheers,
> Matt
> 
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Re: [racket-users] compiler books

2020-11-27 Thread Tim Meehan 
Hendrik - sorry for misspelling your name 😱.

On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 5:41 PM Tim Meehan  wrote:

> Thanks for the links, Hendrick and Matt!
> The holidays gave me some time to learn about things that I had put on the
> back burner all year, so this is great timing.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 2:57 PM Matt Jadud  wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 12:40 PM Hendrik Boom 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 09:46:21AM -0600, Tim Meehan wrote:
>>> I found a book by Dick Grune et al to be somewhat lighter than the
>>> dragon
>>> book.  Looking online, I discoered I was thinking of the first edition.
>>> I
>>> haven't seen the second edition, but I'd guess the second edition would
>>> be
>>> similar, though it has rather more material:
>>>
>>> https://dickgrune.com/Books/MCD_1st_Edition/
>>> https://dickgrune.com/Books/MCD_2nd_Edition/
>>>
>>> When I saw the first edition, I decided that if I were teaching an
>>> introductory course in compilers, I would use it as textbook.
>>>
>>>
>> I've been fond of
>>
>> https://www.nand2tetris.org/
>>
>> for a while as a "soup to nuts" overview of computation from the NAND
>> gate up through a simple computer, a simplified assembly language,
>> assembler, compiler, VM, and so on. It's not an advanced text, but it does
>> provide a hands-on bottom-to-top view of the computational world that can
>> help orient someone who is exploring the space.
>>
>> It's also why I keep wondering when I'm going to break down and pick up a
>> little FPGA board for myself and just play. :)
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Matt
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
>> "Racket Users" group.
>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
>> email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>> To view this discussion on the web visit
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>> 
>> .
>>
>

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Re: [racket-users] compiler books

2020-11-27 Thread Tim Meehan 
Thanks for the links, Hendrick and Matt!
The holidays gave me some time to learn about things that I had put on the
back burner all year, so this is great timing.



On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 2:57 PM Matt Jadud  wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 12:40 PM Hendrik Boom 
> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 09:46:21AM -0600, Tim Meehan wrote:
>> I found a book by Dick Grune et al to be somewhat lighter than the dragon
>> book.  Looking online, I discoered I was thinking of the first edition.
>> I
>> haven't seen the second edition, but I'd guess the second edition would
>> be
>> similar, though it has rather more material:
>>
>> https://dickgrune.com/Books/MCD_1st_Edition/
>> https://dickgrune.com/Books/MCD_2nd_Edition/
>>
>> When I saw the first edition, I decided that if I were teaching an
>> introductory course in compilers, I would use it as textbook.
>>
>>
> I've been fond of
>
> https://www.nand2tetris.org/
>
> for a while as a "soup to nuts" overview of computation from the NAND gate
> up through a simple computer, a simplified assembly language, assembler,
> compiler, VM, and so on. It's not an advanced text, but it does provide a
> hands-on bottom-to-top view of the computational world that can help orient
> someone who is exploring the space.
>
> It's also why I keep wondering when I'm going to break down and pick up a
> little FPGA board for myself and just play. :)
>
> Cheers,
> Matt
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "Racket Users" group.
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> 
> .
>

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Re: [racket-users] compiler books

2020-11-27 Thread Matt Jadud 
On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 12:40 PM Hendrik Boom 
wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 09:46:21AM -0600, Tim Meehan wrote:
> I found a book by Dick Grune et al to be somewhat lighter than the dragon
> book.  Looking online, I discoered I was thinking of the first edition.  I
> haven't seen the second edition, but I'd guess the second edition would be
> similar, though it has rather more material:
>
> https://dickgrune.com/Books/MCD_1st_Edition/
> https://dickgrune.com/Books/MCD_2nd_Edition/
>
> When I saw the first edition, I decided that if I were teaching an
> introductory course in compilers, I would use it as textbook.
>
>
I've been fond of

https://www.nand2tetris.org/

for a while as a "soup to nuts" overview of computation from the NAND gate
up through a simple computer, a simplified assembly language, assembler,
compiler, VM, and so on. It's not an advanced text, but it does provide a
hands-on bottom-to-top view of the computational world that can help orient
someone who is exploring the space.

It's also why I keep wondering when I'm going to break down and pick up a
little FPGA board for myself and just play. :)

Cheers,
Matt

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[racket-users] compiler books

2020-11-27 Thread Hendrik Boom 
On Wed, Nov 25, 2020 at 09:46:21AM -0600, Tim Meehan wrote:
> Hi George, thanks for the reply!
> 
> I work a bit with hardware, but I'm not terribly good with assembly. I know
> enough about hardware to know how hard this must be to get working - but it
> does interest me a lot. The more I learn, the more respect I have for the
> tools available.
> 
> I guess for self-hosting, there are a couple of examples I could look at
> (raco exe, chez-exe, etc).
> 
> I had considered working through Build Your Own Lisp
> , Lisp in Small Pieces, Scheme from Scratch or
> something similar. Attempting self-study of the dragon book
> , or perhaps a lighter introduction
> if anyone has one they like.

I found a book by Dick Grune et al to be somewhat lighter than the dragon 
book.  Looking online, I discoered I was thinking of the first edition.  I 
haven't seen the second edition, but I'd guess the second edition would be 
similar, though it has rather more material:

https://dickgrune.com/Books/MCD_1st_Edition/
https://dickgrune.com/Books/MCD_2nd_Edition/

When I saw the first edition, I decided that if I were teaching an 
introductory course in compilers, I would use it as textbook.

And there's a lot of other interesting material on that web site.

-- hendrik

> 
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 11:26 PM George Neuner  wrote:
> 
> >
> > On 11/24/2020 7:34 PM, Tim Meehan wrote:
> >
> > Some Schemes allow you to compile to a (self-hosting?) executable (Chicken
> > {via C}, Chez, Racket, others?). Some do not (Guile, others?), but compile
> > to bytecode.
> >
> > Why would a group of developers choose one over the other? Or is the end
> > result not that different in either case?
> >
> >
> > The reason for creating stand-alone executables is to be able to run
> > programs in environments where the language tools are not, or cannot be,
> > installed.  For security reasons, many companies do not permit installing
> > programming tools.
> >
> > However, creating stand-alone executables is rather unrelated to what the
> > compiler produces.  There are a number of language implementations - Racket
> > included - which can embed their bytecode (as static data) into a native
> > "runtime" program which executes it.
> >
> > Is there a book/paper that I might read on this?
> >
> >
> > Unfortunately, language implementation is a very large subject area.  If
> > you want to understand why things are being done a certain way, you need to
> > understand the ways that they *could be* done and what trade-offs are
> > involved in using various methods.
> >
> > Little understood fact:  all languages actually are defined by a *virtual*
> > abstract machine.  This is the reason that languages can be implemented on
> > many different real-world CPUs:  it is the abstract machine that defines
> > the language's behavior, and it is the abstract machine - not some CPU -
> > that is the *real* compilation target.
> > [For those about to object: yes, Scheme has a formal denotational
> > definition in contrast to the many languages that are operationally defined
> > by (relatively) informal description of behavior combined with a
> > "reference" implementation.  Consider that Scheme's denotational spec is
> > describing the behavior of an abstract machine, and that Scheme
> > implementations are realizations of the machine.]
> >
> > To get a sense of what is going on under the hood, you need to learn a bit
> > about hardware, and a lot about compilers and interpreters.  Particular
> > language features often can be implemented in multiple ways, and the
> > choices made for various features often affect how harmoniously they can
> > coexist.
> >
> > If you really are serious about learning this stuff, I'm sure we can keep
> > you busy reading for a while.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Tim
> >
> >
> > George
> >
> 
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