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Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching

From Cóilín Nioclásín Glostéir <thanks-to@Taf.com>
Newsgroups comp.compilers
Subject Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching
Date 2026-09-04 21:12 +0000
Organization Compilers Central
Message-ID <26-09-002@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References <26-08-007@comp.compilers>

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Congratulations on an FPGA implementation.

"Interestingly, there is usually another group of students as
well. Many of them already know me from previous mathematics courses
and are curious to see what a programming course taught by a
mathematician looks like."
says
HTTPS://Github.com/michael-lehn/not-abc/tree/main/hpc0-sessions/session00

"No previous programming experience is assumed.

Designing such a course is surprisingly similar to teaching first-year
mathematics."
says
HTTPS://Github.com/michael-lehn/not-abc/tree/main/hpc0-sessions

Michael Lehn <michael.lehn@Uni-Ulm.De> wrote:
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|"[. . .]                                                                      |
|                                                                              |
|[. . .] When teaching C,                                                      |
|I always found declarations unnecessarily difficult to explain. [. . .]       |
|                                                                              |
|[. . .]                                                                       |
|                                                                              |
|[. . .]                                                                       |
|[. . .] But for beginners this means that                                     |
|they already need to understand operator precedence [. . .]                   |
|[. . .]                                                                       |
|                                                                              |
|[. . .]                                                                       |
|                                                                              |
|[. . .]                                                                       |
|[. . .] the subsequent HPC courses use C or C++. The idea is that once        |
|students have learned the basic concepts in ABC, moving on to C should require|
|learning C's declaration syntax rather than learning another substantially    |
|different language.                                                           |
|                                                                              |
|Interestingly, when I introduced ABC some years ago, several colleagues were  |
|quite concerned about this. Their argument was that students without prior    |
|programming experience would now have to learn _two_  languages instead of    |
|one, making things even harder for them.                                      |
|                                                                              |
|[. . .]"                                                                      |
|------------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Normally a compiler module is in the 4th year of a degree, so students
already used to have many "previous programming experience"s including
with C. So why are the ABC students ignorant of C (and even with no
"previous programming experience") at the start of this module? Are
they mathematicians or non-computer-scientists or
non-software-engineers?

HTTP://Gloucester.Insomnia247.NL/
explains an easy way to find a real email address for me.

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Thread

Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching Michael Lehn <michael.lehn@uni-ulm.de> - 2026-08-25 08:05 +0200
  Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching Cóilín Nioclásín Glostéir <thanks-to@Taf.com> - 2026-09-04 21:12 +0000
  Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de - 2026-09-05 07:02 +0000
    Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching Michael Lehn <michael.lehn@uni-ulm.de> - 2026-09-05 19:47 -0700
  Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2026-09-05 14:02 -0400
    Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching Michael Lehn <michael.lehn@uni-ulm.de> - 2026-09-05 19:50 -0700
  Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de - 2026-09-05 07:02 +0000
  Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2026-09-05 14:02 -0400
    Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching George Neuner <gneuner2@comcast.net> - 2026-09-07 15:23 -0400
  Re: A tiny self-hosting compiler used for teaching Michael Lehn <michael.lehn@me.com> - 2026-09-05 22:58 -0700

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