Understanding and Writing Compilers

What Hacker News says

1. mslaApr 2026
   fanf2 on Dec 25, 2015 [dead] | parent | prev | next [–]

   I quite like "understanding and writing compilers" by Richard Bornat - written in the 1970s using BCPL as the implementation language, so rather old-fashioned, but it gives a friendly gentle overview of how to do it, without excessive quantities of parsing theory.

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2. mafmMar 2019
   Nice! Lots of really practical advice.

   I wish I'd been given that advice before I wrote a compiler. Back then, the best advice was in Richard Bornat's Understanding and Writing Compilers and the dragon book - useful, but not a walkthrough.

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3. fanf2Dec 2015
   I quite like "understanding and writing compilers" by Richard Bornat - written in the 1970s using BCPL as the implementation language, so rather old-fashioned, but it gives a friendly gentle overview of how to do it, without excessive quantities of parsing theory.
   thread
4. losherApr 2009
   The closest I've ever seen would be: "Understanding and Writing Compilers: A Do It Yourself Guide"

   Possibly/probably hopelessly dated now, but since you can download a free copy from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bornat what do you have to lose?

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