https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/Recent content in Build a Compiler with Mica on Mica Development UGhttps://mica-dev.com/Mica%20Development%20Web.jpeghttps://mica-dev.com/Mica%20Development%20Web.jpegHugoenhttps://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/why-pl0/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/why-pl0/What a compiler actually is, the entire PL/0 language on one page, and why the smallest complete compiler ever published is still the best one to learn from.https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/get-it-running/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/get-it-running/From nothing to two working PL/0 compilers, a p-code listing, and a native executable you compiled yourself — including the backend dependency and what its licence says.https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-shape/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-shape/The seven parts of a working compiler, why they are ordered the way they are, and what front end and back end actually mean once you can see both.https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-scanner/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-scanner/Turning characters into words: the vocabulary, the lookup that finds reserved words, and why a compiler records a position for everything it reads.https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-symbol-table/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-symbol-table/How a compiler answers what does this name mean here — scope, nesting and shadowing, in one array and forty lines of code.https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-parser/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-parser/Recursive descent: how a grammar becomes a program, where operator precedence actually lives, and how a compiler reports five real mistakes instead of fifty phantoms.https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-seam/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-seam/One parse driving two different back ends: the sixteen operations that make it possible, and what an interface costs in a language with function pointers and in one without.https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-oracle/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-oracle/Wirth's stack machine: eight instructions, the activation record, and the static link that makes a procedure able to read a variable declared two levels out.https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-dragon-road/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/the-dragon-road/The second back end: emitting a real intermediate language, what an IL is for, and the two structural problems that stand between a parse and a production code generator.https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/proving-it/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/proving-it/How two compilers are made to check each other, why a slow reference implementation is worth keeping, and what honest testing of a compiler looks like.https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/exercises/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/exercises/Change the language yourself — nine exercises from a ten-minute warm-up to a genuine piece of compiler engineering, each with the hard part marked.https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/appendix-wirth/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000https://mica-dev.com/learn/build-a-compiler/appendix-wirth/The 1975 PL/0 compiler in Pascal, complete, as Niklaus Wirth published it — with a guide to what to look at and a map from his procedures to the ones in this series.