6 ms·

WTF is wrong with you? That was one of the most informative comments I've ever seen on this site. There was a ton of useful information in there, way more tha

WTF is wrong with you? That was one of the most informative comments I've ever seen on this site. There was a ton of useful information in there, way more than the short little guide in the OP (which I'm not knocking at all).

ilyak 17y ago
I'd like it to be a stand-alone article. This way it would be a first-class citizen on HN. I mean, more meat, examples, and soon quite a few more people know how to prototype a language in SML.
- silentbicycle 17y ago
  Andrew Appel's _Modern Compiler Implementation in ML_ is probably what you want. (http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Compiler-Implementation-Andrew-Appel/dp/0521607647/ http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Compiler-Implementation-Andrew-...) While it uses SML, it's not hard to follow if you use OCaml, and the bibliography / references are also quite helpful. The Ghuloum paper referenced elsewhere in the thread is also quite good (and uses Scheme, for better or worse).
  - ilyak 17y ago
    It's a damn book, not a quick article. Sad.
    - silentbicycle 17y ago
      Compilers are a big topic. Any "quick article" of substance will have references to underlying tools and concepts the author will expect you to know. If you're completely lost, try starting with interpreters first. Compilers build on many of the same ideas, but interpreters are generally simpler. Read "The Art of the Interpreter" and/or SICP, and do the exercises. The former is a short paper, the latter is an excellent book expanding on it.
      - ilyak 17y ago
        Please no books and no research papers. Just a short article showing how to get things done. Exactly as one we're discussing.
        deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
      - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
        I've written compilers, and even though I no longer have any reason to do so, I'd love to know more about writing better compilers in better languages. There are dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of articles and "how to" style pages on the web showing a concrete implementation of a small compiler for a toy language using lex/flex and yacc/bison, yet when asked for something similar in ML, SML, Haskell, whatever, the response is to be pointed at books and scholarly articles. Where are the popular accounts of better compiler building with ML? Are there any? If not, why not? Yes, building an industrial-strength compiler for a real-world langauge is a big and complex undertaking, but I feel the field would advance more quickly if more hackers had more access to more articles of the "Build a compiler in an afternoon" variety. And I'd appreciate learning from it too, despite, or perhaps because of, my existing knowledge.
        silentbicycle 17y ago
        Part of it is that the culture surrounding ML is quite academic. Most of what I've found has been written for journals or books (the Appel compilers book above, _Purely Functional Data Structures_ by Okasaki, etc.), not blogs. Also, the ML community is rather small, though FWIW I'm only really familiar with the OCaml side of it. Here's[1] a post about an OCaml / LLVM article by Jon Harrop, but it's just an intro for an article in his (pay) OCaml Journal. [1]: http://ocamlnews.blogspot.com/2008/09/writing-bytecode-compiler-using-llvm.html
        RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
        And there, to some extent, is the point. People will continue to write "popular press" articles about builing compilers using flex and bison, possibly targetting C as an intermediate language, until the ML community (or equivalent) becomes less clannish. I'd love to see how clever they are, applaud them for it, and build on their work. They don't seem to care.

ilyak 17y ago

I'd like it to be a stand-alone article. This way it would be a first-class citizen on HN. I mean, more meat, examples, and soon quite a few more people know how to prototype a language in SML.

silentbicycle 17y ago
Andrew Appel's _Modern Compiler Implementation in ML_ is probably what you want. (http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Compiler-Implementation-Andrew-Appel/dp/0521607647/ http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Compiler-Implementation-Andrew-...) While it uses SML, it's not hard to follow if you use OCaml, and the bibliography / references are also quite helpful. The Ghuloum paper referenced elsewhere in the thread is also quite good (and uses Scheme, for better or worse).
- ilyak 17y ago
  It's a damn book, not a quick article. Sad.
  - silentbicycle 17y ago
    Compilers are a big topic. Any "quick article" of substance will have references to underlying tools and concepts the author will expect you to know. If you're completely lost, try starting with interpreters first. Compilers build on many of the same ideas, but interpreters are generally simpler. Read "The Art of the Interpreter" and/or SICP, and do the exercises. The former is a short paper, the latter is an excellent book expanding on it.
    - ilyak 17y ago
      Please no books and no research papers. Just a short article showing how to get things done. Exactly as one we're discussing.
      - deleted 17y ago
        [deleted]
    - RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
      I've written compilers, and even though I no longer have any reason to do so, I'd love to know more about writing better compilers in better languages. There are dozens and dozens, if not hundreds of articles and "how to" style pages on the web showing a concrete implementation of a small compiler for a toy language using lex/flex and yacc/bison, yet when asked for something similar in ML, SML, Haskell, whatever, the response is to be pointed at books and scholarly articles. Where are the popular accounts of better compiler building with ML? Are there any? If not, why not? Yes, building an industrial-strength compiler for a real-world langauge is a big and complex undertaking, but I feel the field would advance more quickly if more hackers had more access to more articles of the "Build a compiler in an afternoon" variety. And I'd appreciate learning from it too, despite, or perhaps because of, my existing knowledge.
      - silentbicycle 17y ago
        Part of it is that the culture surrounding ML is quite academic. Most of what I've found has been written for journals or books (the Appel compilers book above, _Purely Functional Data Structures_ by Okasaki, etc.), not blogs. Also, the ML community is rather small, though FWIW I'm only really familiar with the OCaml side of it. Here's[1] a post about an OCaml / LLVM article by Jon Harrop, but it's just an intro for an article in his (pay) OCaml Journal. [1]: http://ocamlnews.blogspot.com/2008/09/writing-bytecode-compiler-using-llvm.html
        RiderOfGiraffes 17y ago
        And there, to some extent, is the point. People will continue to write "popular press" articles about builing compilers using flex and bison, possibly targetting C as an intermediate language, until the ML community (or equivalent) becomes less clannish. I'd love to see how clever they are, applaud them for it, and build on their work. They don't seem to care.