On Fri, Aug 09, 2024 at 04:56:26AM +0200, David Billsbrough via Dng wrote:
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...
>
> At this point in his pilgrimage, it might be an unfair question to ask (it his response when he is ready to answer
> of course). What *amount* of progress in learning new stuff will scratch the current itch?
>
> I can answer for myself, on a slightly different topic: Am I smart enough to write a functional (some language) compiler?
>
> At this point, *no*, in that I would be disappoint with what I could create. To me a 'useless' compiler that 98.973% of
> everyone else would find redundant or useless might make me very happy. If what I had created got me past my current
> learning blockage would be a win.
>
> Example: a simple Pascal compiler that could create a binary exec that would run in Motorola 68K emulator would be cool!
>
> That would mean I had figured out how to tie together a syntax parser (flex), a language token 'AST' tree (bison),
> a code generator and a symbol table. (I think)

First language I implemented was Lisp, way back in the 1960's.
It taught me the basics of parsing (for a very simple grammar)
and interretation (it was an interpreter instead of a compiler0.

It ran on a real machine, not an emulator.
I wrote it in assembler.

It was much simpler than a compiler would have been, and taught me a lot.

It wasn't very useful, because the machine wasn't big enough to run any
serious Lisp programs. Lisp eats memory.

-- hendrik