Learn C and build your own Lisp • Hacker News Board

Re: Learn C and build your own Lisp

#31

Post by orangeduck » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 1:30 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #17

Please don't. Rather pick something like "Compiler Construction" from Niklaus Wirth and learn how to write compilers using memory safe system programming languages. http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/CBEAll.pdf

I wrote this book over several months. It took a few days to get the courage to share it online. It probably took you about 20 seconds to not read my book, dismiss it, and post a comment telling other to do the same. If you think an alternative is better that's fine, but how about you take an extra 20 seconds to think about the situation next time you are going post a comment.

Re: Learn C and build your own Lisp

#32

Post by orangeduck » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 1:30 PM UTC

JasonFruit wrote: post #23

If I decided to work through this, and thought it was really good, I'd be unable to make a donation because I don't dabble in cryptocurrencies. Why not make donating "real" money possible, as well?

Thanks for the suggestion. I'll open this option up if possible.

Re: Learn C and build your own Lisp

#33

Post by orangeduck » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 1:32 PM UTC

SneakerXZ wrote: post #22

Does it use a generator to generate lexer and parser or author is suggesting to write them manually?

Author here. A parser combinator library is used to do the parsing.

Re: Learn C and build your own Lisp

#34

Post by jnbiche » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 1:33 PM UTC

mcmillhj wrote: post #30

jnbiche wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow! This is extremely useful, thank you. I've been wanting to develop my own statically-typed language, but almost all tutorials on the web are for dynamic languages with little mention given to type systems. I've already started a toy dynamically-typed language, but the step up from that to a static language seems significant, particularly given the dearth of information I can find on the web (aside from dense a…

You can get a used copy of the Dragon book for relatively cheap. The PDF is probably floating around on the internet somewhere as well.

Yeah, I'm always cautious about pirated pdf's floating around the net, since they frequently carry malware. Probably not an issue for Linux systems, but I prefer not to take a chance.

I'd definitely pick up a used copy of the Dragon book if I could find one for a reasonable price. Unfortunately, this book is used frequently in college CS courses, so the demand for used copies stays high, and so does the price.

Re: Learn C and build your own Lisp

#35

Post by sanxiyn » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 1:33 PM UTC

This is a good stuff. 4 years ago, I wrote a Lisp in 500 lines of C in one day after finishing SICP. Typing it out did made what I learned more concrete.

https://gist.github.com/sanxiyn/523967

Re: Learn C and build your own Lisp

#36

Post by pjmlp » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 1:35 PM UTC

orangeduck wrote: post #31

pjmlp wrote: post #17

Please don't. Rather pick something like "Compiler Construction" from Niklaus Wirth and learn how to write compilers using memory safe system programming languages. http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/CBEAll.pdf

I wrote this book over several months. It took a few days to get the courage to share it online. It probably took you about 20 seconds to not read my book, dismiss it, and post a comment telling other to do the same. If you think an alternative is better that's fine, but how about you take an extra 20 seconds to think about the situation next time you are going post a comment.

Sorry but I think the world is better server by younger generations learning that C is not the only way to do systems programming and there are better, safer, alternatives.

Re: Learn C and build your own Lisp

#37

Post by HillRat » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 1:40 PM UTC

csl wrote: post #9

CGudapati wrote: post #2

How good is this book for a complete beginner? I am starting to learn C in my free time and I have no objective way to judge this book.

I also did a scan of the book; it seems pretty good! However, if you're serious about learning C then I strongly recommend getting the K&R book [0]. It's short and quickly gets down to business --- the first chapter alone gives you a condensed but working overview of the language as a whole. Even experienced C programmers seem to keep the book around as it's good as a reference as well. I strongly recommend people to…

Or King's C Programming: A Modern Approach, which lacks the conciseness (and affordability) of K&R but is probably the best single text out there, and unlike K&R is updated through C99.

Re: Learn C and build your own Lisp

#38

Post by ilbe » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 1:44 PM UTC

Wow, very timely, yesterday I needed to brush up on C and was wondering how I would go about it. Thanks. Very minor note: the link to "Learn C the Hard Way" on the faq page links back to the faq page.

Re: Learn C and build your own Lisp

#39

Post by m_mueller » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 1:45 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #27

m_mueller wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that might be useful for you: I've heard a talk where the speaker described how F# allows defining one's own type system as an input to the compiler. The language is apparently very extendible this way. It's also open source but I can't find information about its license just now. If I were to build a custom type system that's probably where I'd start to look at, even though I'm not a .NET developer.

Hmm, maybe he was talking about type providers? These let you "customize" F# (kind of like macros) but not really implement a new language. But I'd definitely be interested in that talk if you can remember the name of the speaker or the venue/conference so I can try to Google it.

It was "S4174 - How to Design a Language Integrated CUDA Compiler with LLVM" at the GTC 2014. Videos should be up in a month or so.

Re: Learn C and build your own Lisp

#40

Post by Nav_Panel » Fri, Apr 04, 2014, 1:45 PM UTC

jnbiche wrote: post #15

tomp wrote: post #5

In the last chapter, Bonus Projects, the author mentions Static Typing & type systems. If anyone's interested in learning more: I've implemented a few simple implementations of basic (and not so basic) type systems[1]. Currently, only 3 type systems are finished (Hindley Milner's Algorithm W, and Daan Leijen's extensible rows and first-class polymorphism), while gradual typing is almost done (based on [2], in branch…

Oh wow! This is extremely useful, thank you. I've been wanting to develop my own statically-typed language, but almost all tutorials on the web are for dynamic languages with little mention given to type systems. I've already started a toy dynamically-typed language, but the step up from that to a static language seems significant, particularly given the dearth of information I can find on the web (aside from dense a…

Here's a different book you might be interested in ("Practical Foundations for Programming Languages":

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rwh/plbook/book.pdf

It gets pretty math-heavy at times, at least in the beginning (you can probably skip the first chapter if it's too rough), but ultimately the book is about programming language design and different ways of designing and evaluating typed (or un(i)typed) languages. It also looks at a large number of important languages including PCF, Typed/Untyped Lambda Calculus, System F, Gödel's T and ALGOL (the last of which is interesting because it uses what we now call the IO Monad).

I'm taking the class (15-312) right now, and as homework we typically implement an interpreter for some language using SML (OCaml would likely work fine for the general use case), and then prove a few things about the language. Our languages rely on our Abstract Binding Tree (ABT) infrastructure that we developed early on in the course. You can find the course page at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rjsimmon/15312-s14/index.html if you want to check out what we're working on.