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Crafting Interpreters: A Review

chidiwilliams.com

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Re: Crafting Interpreters: A Review

#71

Post by auto »

munificent wrote: post #46
marai2 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the footer on the online version of the book says "Handcrafted by Robert Nystorm" - it really is lovingly hand crafted . It shows that the author went over the content many, many times polishing it with every go. The content builds up really well as it goes along. On a minor note, whenever I read a technical book I always come across some mistake in the copy-editing, a missed article, a misplaced article, a typo.…

> Though I do feel the author ran out of steam with respect to the lovely, quirky artwork in the book. Definitely true. I was hoping to write the book in two years and it took me six. By the end (which was also during the pandemic) I was pretty fried and it was hard to summon much energy for whismy. I tried to pack as many illustrations in as I could, but by later chapters I was really just trying to get it done. Als…

> I've already spent the money on whiskey and synthesizers

You know, after reading Game Programming Patterns years ago I knew I'd get CI eventually, and have only delayed because I know I don't have the time to give it what it deserves just yet (two kids under three, fulltime Senior Eng, yada yada you know the drill), but this line hits so close to home that it's getting purchased right now.

Everything I've taken the time to read on your blog has stuck with me Bob, but knowing you're a whiskey and synth lover too just makes it all the better. Crafting Interpreters will still wait though, I've got a bottle of JW Gold and my barely touched Dirtywave M8 to attend to first.

Re: Crafting Interpreters: A Review

#72

Post by sydthrowaway »

vips7L wrote: post #50
Derbasti wrote: post #35

Without a doubt one of the best technical books I have ever read. To me, it was a missing piece of the big puzzle of "how do computers work". I read many a book to answer this question, and came away with three books: - CODE by Charles Petzold explains the CPU - Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Arpaci-Dusseau explain OSes - Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom explains programming languages Masterfully done…

OSTEP is the best technical book I’ve ever read.

Exercises are lacking.

Re: Crafting Interpreters: A Review

#74

Post by danhau »

bow_ wrote: post #52

I hesitated a little bit before deciding to purchase and go through the book. Had already read many glowing reviews then, but was not sure if the choice of language (Java) for the first half of the book would be a hindrance (it's not the stack I am most familiar with). Decided to buy it anyway, primarily because the two implementations of the toy language piqued my interest (most other books only go through one imple…

Does the book go into more „modern“ parser architectures ala Roslyn Red Green Trees?

Re: Crafting Interpreters: A Review

#75

Post by sg47 »

Derbasti wrote: post #35

Without a doubt one of the best technical books I have ever read. To me, it was a missing piece of the big puzzle of "how do computers work". I read many a book to answer this question, and came away with three books: - CODE by Charles Petzold explains the CPU - Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces by Arpaci-Dusseau explain OSes - Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom explains programming languages Masterfully done…

Any defining book for databases? I'm interested in going deeper into the query planner and indexes.

Re: Crafting Interpreters: A Review

#76

Post by llimllib »

danhau wrote: post #74
bow_ wrote: post #52

I hesitated a little bit before deciding to purchase and go through the book. Had already read many glowing reviews then, but was not sure if the choice of language (Java) for the first half of the book would be a hindrance (it's not the stack I am most familiar with). Decided to buy it anyway, primarily because the two implementations of the toy language piqued my interest (most other books only go through one imple…

Does the book go into more „modern“ parser architectures ala Roslyn Red Green Trees?

You can read it on the web here: https://craftinginterpreters.com/contents.html

(I don't know how to answer your question accurately)

Re: Crafting Interpreters: A Review

#77

Post by 62951413 »

bow_ wrote: post #52

I hesitated a little bit before deciding to purchase and go through the book. Had already read many glowing reviews then, but was not sure if the choice of language (Java) for the first half of the book would be a hindrance (it's not the stack I am most familiar with). Decided to buy it anyway, primarily because the two implementations of the toy language piqued my interest (most other books only go through one imple…

Using Java was a poor choice (especially without the latest improvements such as records and switch expressions):

* new books should use more modern popular languages to age well and to attract younger audience

* on the JVM there are languages better suited for the topic (e.g. Scala by a large margin)

* There's already the "Language Implementation Patterns" book (https://www.amazon.com/Language-Implementation-Patterns-Doma...) which not only is great for teaching because of its pattern-based approach but also gives you real life skills (e.g. ANTLR is used in most big data query engines)

Re: Crafting Interpreters: A Review

#78

Post by codezero »

vertexmachina wrote: post #64
ParallelThread wrote: post #17

What other books are of the same caliber that HN would recommend?

CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software - Charles Petzold The Elements of Computing Systems - Noam Nisan, Shimon Schocken Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces - Remzi H. Arpaci-Dusseau, Andrea C. Arpaci-Dusseau

Huge plus one for OS: Three Easy Pieces. It sticks in my memory forever and I just confirmed, I had a random question about "why" from part of that book in 2014 and emailed Remzi and within a few days had a very detailed response back. It was much appreciated because I can get hung up on little details that I can't explain and it can really create a wall for me, so thanks Remzi for being responsive to a learner!

Re: Crafting Interpreters: A Review

#79

Post by tomcam »

62951413 wrote: post #77
bow_ wrote: post #52

I hesitated a little bit before deciding to purchase and go through the book. Had already read many glowing reviews then, but was not sure if the choice of language (Java) for the first half of the book would be a hindrance (it's not the stack I am most familiar with). Decided to buy it anyway, primarily because the two implementations of the toy language piqued my interest (most other books only go through one imple…

Using Java was a poor choice (especially without the latest improvements such as records and switch expressions): * new books should use more modern popular languages to age well and to attract younger audience * on the JVM there are languages better suited for the topic (e.g. Scala by a large margin) * There's already the "Language Implementation Patterns" book ( https://www.amazon.com/Language-Implementation-Patter…

You sound pretty smart! How about writing that book for the rest of us?

Re: Crafting Interpreters: A Review

#80

Post by vips7L »

sydthrowaway wrote: post #72
vips7L wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OSTEP is the best technical book I’ve ever read.

Exercises are lacking.

YMMV but I found them to be pretty complex and required some in depth knowledge of both assembly and C. Implementing threads/clone at the sys call level required knowing how to set up the stack and registers for the new process. If I recall correctly there was also a hard problem about virtual memory, but this was 3 years ago.
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