Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers.
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2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
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HN comment order*Donald Knute -> Donald Ervin Knuth is the author of the book "The Art of Computer Programming" (in progress for a couple of decades, currently volume 4c is being written). It is quite advanced, and it will likely not cover compilers anymore (Addison-Wesley had commissioned a compiler book from Knuth when he was a doctoral candidate, now he is retired and has stated his goal for the series has changed). I disagree with the author's point: the "Dragon book"'s ("Compilers…
"Just"? I make the first one 94,000 words. Has anyone actually read the papers to make sure that the OP has recommended something worthwhile? "Reading" and then coding alongside would probably take a full week's worth of time (I'd be interested to know if different). It's a genuine question. People are recommended to read SICP all the time, by many influential people, but when a proper discussion of whether it's actually worthwhile comes up, we found a considerable range of…
'Compiler Construction' by Niklaus Wirth[1] is a pretty good book too. It's got the hands-on feel of Crenshaw's book with a quick but, not too superficial, introduction to theory. The book is little more than 100 pages long. The compiler is written in Oberon however, which is also the source language (actually the source language is Oberon-0, a subset) but, Oberon is super simple and can be learned on the go. [1] https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/CompilerConstruction/...
Alternatively, you can learn macros, as PG might suggest. Fundamentally, compilers just translate one string of symbols into another. The ones we're familiar with just translate a high level language into assembly. But there are others -- every object relational model system has a defacto compiler.
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 1199
- Total comments
- 345
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008-06-30 | Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers | luckystrike | 51 | 39 |
| 2011-08-26 | Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers.First breakout | ColinWright | 399 | 77 |
| 2015-12-24 | Want to Write a Compiler? Read These Two Papers (2008) | rspivak | 237 | 70 |
| 2019-06-02 | Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers. (2008) | pcr910303 | 3 | 0 |
| 2026-04-15 | Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers (2008)Hall induction · Best thread · Latest 20+ point return | downbad_ | 509 | 159 |