Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text?

From	compilers@is-not-my.name
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text?
Date	2012-04-19 17:32 +0000
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<12-04-041@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<12-04-022@comp.compilers>

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BGB <cr88192@nospam.hotmail.com> wrote:

> this is a hard thing to ask.
>
> There is a lot of possible variation between languages, all of which may
> have notable impact on the "best" compiler design.

I'm not dreaming about "best" just getting a small project going would be
enough to make my day or month etc.

> I have not as of yet seen much of anything which tries to address all
> this, and most focus more narrowly on "a C or Java like language
> compiling directly to native code and using a C-style calling
> convention".

I guess that would be ok, do you have any suggestions on a book like that?

> OS and CPU architecture can impact a fair amount as well, so it could be
> similarly hard to address all of this without making at least some
> assumptions on these fronts.

Fair enough. I didn't think so but everybody seems to be saying that so I
guess that is the way these books are written. I would have thought there is
a lot that has nothing to do with code generation and that code generation
itself aside from optimization obviously would be a pluggable component.

> for example, do they use x86 or ARM as the example? ...

My target would be z/OS and I may want to do it so it can generate code for
MVS and XA and ESA targets as well. If I can get to the code generation part
I'll have no trouble with this actual detail. It's all the stuff before that
and maybe after it, I have no idea how to do.

> like with "authority": many people play "follow the leader", others play
> "oppose the leader", but both are likely pointless.

I have no agenda and I know my limits. I'm not opposed to a book that picks
one way and pretends it's the only way, we've all been around to know that
can't be true. I'm willing to go along for the ride, but I am trying to find
a writer you guys says is trustworthy.

> a person actively "doing their own thing" will not likely play that
> game, and may not really care what the leader thinks, but will in turn
> seem to at times be "following the leader" and "opposing the leader",
> not because they actually are, but because not everything "the leader"
> does is necessarily either right or wrong.

I'm happy to follow the leader on this sort of project because I've never
done it before. I don't pretend to know how to do it and I'd be silly to
pretend that. But I do need something that explains the practical issues and
I don't need to understand the theory to be able to prove anything. If I
can understand /what/ to do I'll eventually understand /why/ it works well
enough for what I need. At some level everything is a black box. Some people
just drill down further than others until they get to that point.

> I don't entirely agree (not being as much of a fan of math either).
> the problem isn't so much about "understanding the topic", so much as
> people often trying to throw mathematical notation at pretty much
> everything.

This issue comes up a lot and it's partly people have worked pretty hard to
amass deep knowledge of a topic and they don't like to see people coming in
and trivializing or disrespecting that and saying you're all silly and I can
do it without all that. Nothing of the kind, I have a lot of respect for
people with the theoretical understanding who've actually written a real,
disciplined compiler according to proper rigorous methods.

My approach is not to dismiss that or say it has no value, quite the
opposite. I don't know what you guys know and I can't learn it quickly
enough so I need some distillation of the theory and a presentation in
a practical way a good programmer who is a very bad mathematician can
understand and actually use.

> often it could be explained easily enough using either natural-language,
> some kind of pseudo-code, or some other specialized (presumably
> non-esoteric) notation.

That is what I thought but everybody else seems to say that isn't true.

> it is kind of defeats the point if a person needs a math degree to even
> figure out what exactly this glob of notation is supposed to be (or even
> what sort of math this is even supposed to be, as it becomes more the
> "find a match the greek letters and other symbols" game).

Yeah that's how I feel.

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Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-17 21:28 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Philip Herron <redbrain@gcc.gnu.org> - 2012-04-18 14:25 +0100
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 16:32 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? arnold@skeeve.com (Aharon Robbins) - 2012-04-20 03:58 +0000
        Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-22 10:10 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-20 09:45 +0100
        Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Jonathan Thornburg" <jthorn@astro.indiana.edu> - 2012-04-21 15:04 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-04-18 08:39 -0700
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 17:32 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Alain Ketterlin <alain@dpt-info.u-strasbg.fr> - 2012-04-18 18:24 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> - 2012-04-19 13:53 +0200
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-21 03:07 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-21 12:01 +0100
        Re: code quality, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> - 2012-04-22 12:41 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 11:31 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Jonathan Thornburg" <jthorn@astro.indiana.edu> - 2012-04-20 16:19 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Derek M. Jones" <derek@knosof.co.uk> - 2012-04-18 18:16 +0100
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-04-18 22:43 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-04-19 00:05 -0700
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 11:31 +0000
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 16:32 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-18 19:30 +0000
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-19 18:43 +0100
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-04-18 20:29 +0000
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Hans-Peter Diettrich <DrDiettrich1@aol.com> - 2012-04-19 14:20 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 19:05 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Uli Kusterer <ulimakesacompiler@googlemail.com> - 2012-04-21 11:30 +0200
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Roberto Waltman <usenet@rwaltman.com> - 2012-04-18 22:00 -0400
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-19 11:31 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-04-20 07:02 +0000
        Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-22 11:10 +0000
          Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-04-22 23:56 +0000
        Re: PL/360, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? ArarghMail204@Arargh.com - 2012-04-24 19:13 -0500
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Bakul Shah <usenet@bitblocks.com> - 2012-04-18 21:15 -0700
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-20 16:06 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? torbenm@diku.dk (Torben Ægidius Mogensen) - 2012-04-19 14:58 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-20 16:06 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Joe Schmo" <askmeforit@myisp.com> - 2012-04-21 02:53 -0600
    Re: Writing parsers, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Uli Kusterer <ulimakesacompiler@googlemail.com> - 2012-04-22 16:18 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-23 19:12 +0000
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Uli Kusterer <ulimakesacompiler@googlemail.com> - 2012-04-21 11:22 +0200
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-04-21 18:58 -0700
      Re: writing interpreters, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Uli Kusterer <ulimakesacompiler@googlemail.com> - 2012-04-22 12:53 +0200
        Re: writing interpreters, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-04-22 12:29 -0700
      Re: generating bytecode, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Uli Kusterer <ulimakesacompiler@googlemail.com> - 2012-04-22 13:12 +0200
      Re: Recursive descent parsing and optimization, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-22 12:51 +0100
        Re: Recursive descent parsing and optimization, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> - 2012-04-22 18:18 +0200
          Re: Recursive descent parsing and optimization, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "Bartc" <bartc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-23 10:59 +0100
        Re: Recursive descent parsing and optimization, was Good practical language and OS agnostic text? BGB <cr88192@hotmail.com> - 2012-04-22 13:45 -0700
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? compilers@is-not-my.name - 2012-04-22 22:11 +0000
      Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-04-23 18:41 +0100
  Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? basile@starynkevitch.net - 2012-05-02 22:16 -0700
    Re: Good practical language and OS agnostic text? Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@2ndquadrant.com> - 2012-06-06 16:52 +0000

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