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Becoming a compiler engineer

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Re: Becoming a compiler engineer

#51

Post by vatsachak »

anon291 wrote: post #29

I've been in compiler engineering now for almost a decade. No grad school, just moved into the field and did a lot of random projects for my own entertainment (various compilers for toy languages, etc). It takes a particular type of person who cares about things like correctness. It is a very bizarre subsection of people with an improbably high number of transgender people and an equally high number of rad trad Catho…

Rad trad Catholics makes sense because Catholic theology involves a lot of logic

Re: Becoming a compiler engineer

#52

Post by torginus »

rurban wrote: post #30
torginus wrote: post #23

[flagged]

LLVM is certainly not a recommended way to start. That would be to start with a small lisp or ocaml compiler. There you have all the batteries included and the project would still be small enough.

Honestly I've read a ton of scaremongering about how awful and complex LLVM was, and I too assumed the worst, but the API is surprisingly benign and well documented for how difficult a task it accomplishes.

I also checked out Cranelift which was recommended to me as a battle-tested but easier to use alternative, and honestly I haven't found it to be that much simpler.

Re: Becoming a compiler engineer

#53

Post by calvinmorrison »

being a compiler engineer is like making it in hollywood with a lot less glam. There are maybe 10-15 serious compiler projects out there, think LLVM, GCC, Microsoft, Java, then you've got virtual language bytecode intepreters.

The world needs maybe what, 5000, 10000 of these people maximum? In a world with 8 billion people?

Re: Becoming a compiler engineer

#54

Post by jasonjmcghee »

thereitgoes456 wrote: post #44
jasonjmcghee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fiction what is she plagiarizing

What I just said is a fact. Look it up if you like

No I'm literally saying - she writes fiction- how can you plagiarize a fiction book and make it work lol

(I have no knowledge / context of this situation - no idea if she did or what happened here)

Re: Becoming a compiler engineer

#55

Post by WhyOhWhyQ »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #20
est31 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs (or LLM assisted coding), if successful, will more likely make the number of compilers go down, as LLMs are better with mainstream languages compared to niche ones. Same effect as with frameworks. Less languages, less compilers needed.

See, I'm coming from the understanding that language development is a dead-end in the real world. Can you name a single language made after Zig or Rust? And even those languages haven't taken over much of the professional world. So when I say companies will maintain compilers, I mean DSLs (like starlark or RSpec), application-specific languages (like CUDA), variations on existing languages (maybe C++ with some in-hou…

This seems like a case of moving the goalposts because Zig and Rust still seem newfangled to me. I thought nothing would come after C++11.

Re: Becoming a compiler engineer

#56

Post by zfnmxt »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #35
torginus wrote: post #23

[flagged]

So few people trained or specialized in language implementation and compiler writing actually get the chance to write compilers. Those jobs are just so rare that many people in that area re-specialize into something else (like AI these days).

They aren't that rare. And AI is expanding the niche because making parallel linear algebra go zoom zoom is compiler work. There's also a lot of quantum compiler work.

Re: Becoming a compiler engineer

#57

Post by Joel_Mckay »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #35
torginus wrote: post #23

[flagged]

So few people trained or specialized in language implementation and compiler writing actually get the chance to write compilers. Those jobs are just so rare that many people in that area re-specialize into something else (like AI these days).

It is a Chicken-or-Egg problem, as most commercial attempts at compilers were awful partially compliant bodges, and or expensive.

The GNU gcc groups win is rarely considered these days, but kids who were stuck with masm, risc asm, or Basic thought they were heroes to the hobby.

Slowly, the FOSS compilers grew in features, and commercial entities realized it was less risky to embrace an established compiler ecosystem, and paid people to port in an experienced user-base.

Starting from scratch is hard, as people often make the same logical mistakes. =3

"There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth...not going all the way, and not starting."(Prince Gautama Siddhartha)

Re: Becoming a compiler engineer

#58

Post by trvthnvke »

anon291 wrote: post #29

I've been in compiler engineering now for almost a decade. No grad school, just moved into the field and did a lot of random projects for my own entertainment (various compilers for toy languages, etc). It takes a particular type of person who cares about things like correctness. It is a very bizarre subsection of people with an improbably high number of transgender people and an equally high number of rad trad Catho…

[flagged]

Re: Becoming a compiler engineer

#59

Post by typpilol »

jasonjmcghee wrote: post #54
thereitgoes456 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I just said is a fact. Look it up if you like

No I'm literally saying - she writes fiction- how can you plagiarize a fiction book and make it work lol (I have no knowledge / context of this situation - no idea if she did or what happened here)

You can't plagiarize fiction?

So if I copy paste Harry Potter that's ok?

What kind of argument is that

Re: Becoming a compiler engineer

#60

Post by achierius »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #53

being a compiler engineer is like making it in hollywood with a lot less glam. There are maybe 10-15 serious compiler projects out there, think LLVM, GCC, Microsoft, Java, then you've got virtual language bytecode intepreters. The world needs maybe what, 5000, 10000 of these people maximum? In a world with 8 billion people?

There's more than that. Not a huge amount more but still.

- multiple large companies contribute to each of the larger AoT compiler projects; think AMD's contributions to LLVM and GCC, and multiple have their own internal team for handling compiler work based on some OSS upstream (eg Apple clang)

- various companies have their own DSLs, eg meta's Hack, the python spinoff Goldman has going on, etc.

- DBs have query language engineers which are effectively compiler roles

- (most significantly) most hardware companies and accelerators need people to write toolchains; Triton, Pytorch, JAX, NVCC, etc. all have a lot of people working on them

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