From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.5-pre1 (2020-06-20) on ip-172-31-74-118.ec2.internal X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=3.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.5-pre1 Date: 15 Jan 93 14:00:06 GMT From: agate!usenet.ins.cwru.edu!magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state .edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!yale.edu!think.com!spdcc!iecc!compilers -sender@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (Adam Goldberg) Subject: Re: Compiler Construction in Ada Message-ID: <93-01-111@comp.compilers> List-Id: moss@cs.cmu.edu (Eliot Moss) writes: >Reacting to previous postings, I don't think deep understanding of the >syntactic aspects is quite the important thing. It is much more important >to gain understanding of type checking, semantic processing in general, >code generation, and the role of optimization, in my opinion. Many people >concentrate on the syntactic stuff because it's clean and theoretical, but >the tools make it by the far the easiest part of compiling, so to me it >does not seem the smart place to spend limited classroom time. dtl8v@holmes.acc.Virginia.EDU (Heracleitus) writes: > I have to agree with this point of view. I took a class in programming >languages that involved writing a nearly-full front end for a Unity Just another student's point of view: I took a compilers class where we wrote a simple lexical analyzer, then a simple parser from scratch. We then took a skeleton tiny-c lex/yacc definition and expanded on it to the point of having a working compiler (including peephole optimizations, not including the assembler). This seemed to give a proper perspective on how important tools (lex/yacc) can be, while at the same time not wasting too much time implementing something which could better by done by the tools. -- Adam G. adamg@microware.com, or ...!uunet!mcrware!adamg -- Send compilers articles to compilers@iecc.cambridge.ma.us or {ima | spdcc | world}!iecc!compilers. Meta-mail to compilers-request.