notes

Post-undergrad projects

• CS 4410: Compiler Design (1–2 weeks)
• Nand to Tetris (1–2 weeks)
• Dependent types:
  • Simply Easy (1 week)
  • Eightfold interpreter (1/2 week)
  • Idris (3 weeks)
  • Software Foundations (interspersed)
  • Design my perfect language
• Compiler front-end:
  • Design language to compile to esolangs
  • wspace-syntax
    • Assembly dialects
    • Languages: HaPyLi, Nospace
  • Advent of Code (interspersed)
• Compiler middle-end
  • GRIN
• Compiler back-end and runtime:
  • Crafting Interpreters
  • Hacker’s Delight
  • Handbook of Floating-Point Arithmetic by Jean-Michel Muller, Nicolas Brunie, Florent de Dinechin, Claude-Pierre Jeannerod, Mioara Joldes, Vincent Lefèvre, Guillaume Melquiond, Nathalie Revol, and Serge Torres, 2018
  • Build Whitespace runtime with GMP and a GC (e.g., Boehm GC)

Self-guided courses

• Nand to Tetris
  • HDL simulator
  • Hack VM
  • Hack assembler
  • Jack compiler
  • Archive the course
• “An Incremental Approach to Compiler Construction” (Abdulaziz Ghuloum, 2006)
  • Nada Amin’s implementation, including “Compilers: Backend to Frontend and Back to Front Again” (Abdulaziz Ghuloum, 2006) and “How to compile with continuations” (Matt Might)
• Northeastern CS 4410/6410: Compiler Design
  • Semesters: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2023, Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Spring 2017
• UCSD CSE131/231: Compiler Construction
• EECS 483: Compiler Construction
  • Semesters: Fall 2022, Fall 2021
• Cornell CS 6120: Advanced Compilers
  • Semesters: Spring 2022, Fall 2020, Fall 2019
  • Students write high-quality blog posts, including:
    • Global Value Numbering
    • A Dependently Typed Language
  • Bril compiler IR for learning [docs]
• EECS 598: Category Theory for Computer Scientists
  • Semesters: Winter 2023, Winter 2022
• University of Cambridge Compiler Construction
  • Semesters: 2022-23, 2021-22, 2020-21, 2019-20, 2018-19, 2017-18, 2016-17, 2015-16, 2014-15, 2013-14, 2012-13, 2011-12
• University of Pennsylvania CIS 341: Compilers
  • Semesters: Spring 2022, Spring 2020, Spring 2018, Spring 2017, Spring 2015, Spring 2013
• KAIST CS420: Compiler Design
  • KECC: KAIST Educational C Compiler: C compiler written in Rust
• (Repeat) CMU Computer Systems: A Programmer’s Perspective
• Software Foundations
  • To start: Merge my SF work from as a student and TA, to use as a base.
  • Logical Foundations (7/17 chapters remaining)
  • Programming Language Foundations (14/16 chapters remaining)
  • Verified Functional Algorithms (16 chapters)
  • QuickChick: Property-Based Testing in Coq (4/5 chapters remaining)
  • Verifiable C (19 chapters)
  • Separation Logic Foundations (13 chapters)

Books

• Crafting Interpreters
• Hacker’s Delight
• The Rustonomicon
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools

Implementing papers

• Type systems
  • Dependent types
    • “A Tutorial Implementation of a Dependently Typed Lambda Calculus” and “How to Keep Lambda Calculus Simple” [HN]
  • “Bidirectional Typing”
• Logic programming
  • miniKanren and microKanren
  • E-graphs
  • BDDs
• Adaptive programming
  • Adapton and miniAdapton
• Partial evaluation
  • Futamura projections
  • “Collapsing Towers of Interpreters” and “Lightweight Modular Staging”
    • “Elementary Tutorial on Normalization by Evaluation”
• Compiler IRs
  • Irreducible control flow
• Regular expressions
• Category theory
• Data-codata duality
• Self-modifying programs
  • “A computability perspective on self-modifying programs” (Guillaume Bonfante, Jean-Yves Marion, and Daniel Reynaud, 2009)
  • “Reachability Analysis of Self Modifying Code” (Tayssir Touili and Xin Ye, 2017)
  • “LTL model checking of self modifying code” (Tayssir Touili and Xin Ye, 2022)

See the papers chosen for Kimball’s winter 2023 CS 630 and 2019 PL winter school.

Lectures

• Oregon Programming Languages Summer School

Learning languages

• Idris
  • Type-Driven Development with Idris
  • Build a Whitespace backend for Idris
• Concatenative
  • Chuck Moore’s languages, like colorForth and Machine Forth
    • MF (inspired by Machine Forth)
  • High-level languages, like Kitten, Factor, and Joy
  • Starting Forth by Leo Brodie
  • Thinking Forth by Leo Brodie
  • “Forth: The programming language that writes itself: The Web Page” [HN]
  • Abstractly interpreting stack operations to SSA (like I did with Nebula) [HN]

Implementing languages

• Esolangs
  • 2-dimensional: Aheui, Befunge, Funciton, Piet
  • Automata: Game of Life
  • Bitstrings: Bitwise Cyclic Tag
  • Challenging: Malbolge
  • Dependent types: Eightfold
  • Metacircular: Emmental
  • Object-oriented: Glass
  • Rewriting: Cratylus, Fractran, ///, Thue
  • Self-modifying:
    • Befunge
    • Intcode
    • Synacor Challenge
      • Debugger
      • “Reverse-engineering the Synacor Challenge” by Matt Keeter (2024)
  • Single-instruction: Subleq
  • Stack-oriented: Piet
  • Trees:
    • Leaf
      • Implement ? in self-interpreter
      • Polish cursor API
  • µ-recursive functions: Myopia
• Instruction sets
  • Gameboy
  • JVM
    • in Rust [HN]
  • QFTASM
  • Y86

Challenges

• Advent of Code
  • Implement challenges in a language of my design

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