A compiler for teaching about compilers

Baldwin, Doug

doi:10.1145/611892.611974

Cited by 24 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Because of the size and complexity of a compiler, there is a rich body of work documenting approaches to teaching the course. A selection of recent work includes attempts to make compiler construction more manageable by using tiny languages [2,6], more relevant by broadening language translation [4,16], more viable in a broadening computer science curriculum [15], or more applicable to other courses [5]. These approaches focus on the process of constructing a compiler and thereby teach the underlying fundamental concepts that enable translation.…”

Section: Prior Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defense against the Dark Arts

Cerf

2012

IEEE Internet Comput.

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Computer science faculty must attract and retain students by offering innovative courses that spark student interest, yet still teach core, computer science concepts. These efforts have become particularly important as computer science enrollments have declined, thus increasing concerns for attracting and retaining students. We describe an innovative course that leverages students' interest in computer security issues to attract and retain technically-oriented students. Our initial vision was to offer a course covering computer viruses-a subject that even a novice computer user has some familiarity. To avoid the controversy associated with teaching students how to write malicious software, we focused the course on techniques for defending against viruses, so we named the course Defense Against the Dark Arts. In teaching the course, we have found the subject matter provides an engaging way to introduce and reinforce many important computer science concepts that other courses often cover, most particularly, the traditional compiler course. We have taught the course three times at two separate institutions, with a third school soon to follow. The course has been well received by students-completely filling each semester with enrollments that are four to five times greater than the compiler course. Furthermore, student surveys indicate that the course raises students' awareness of computer security while introducing students to important program translation and analysis concepts.

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Section: Prior Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Defense against the Dark Arts

Cerf

2012

IEEE Internet Comput.

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“…Yet our project differs from most of its peers [2,4,6] in several regards, starting with the motivations: compiler construction is a by-product, not the primary goal. This project was introduced because it met a set of requirements that were not satisfied by the existing (shorter) projects:…”

Section: Yet Another Compiler Project?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast to other approaches [6], we kept the same ambitions as Andrew W. Appel: the source language is fairly complete, and we target a genuine (mips) assembly language. In addition to meeting the aforementioned goals (Section 2), the compiler has to: Never Repeat Itself Every stage must present/exercise something new.…”

Section: What Compiler Design?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Making compiler construction projects relevant to core curriculums

DemailleAkim

2005

SIGCSE Bull.

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Having 300 students a year implement a compiler is a debatable enterprise, since the industry will certainly not recruit them for this competence. Yet we made that decision five years ago, for reasons not related to compiler construction. We detail these motivations, the resulting compiler design, and how we manage the assignment. The project meets its goals, since the majority of former students invariably refer to it as the project that taught them the most.

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“…1 An alternative would be to create a simpler language such as MinimL [10], which was built to contain just enough features to be interesting, but not so many that students are overwhelmed. We opt for the subset approach because we feel that students are more excited about a language which they might imagine using in future employment.…”

Section: Student Teamsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Building an XQuery interpreter in a compiler construction course

Pevzner

Deutsch

et al. 2005

SIGCSE Bull.

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For two years, we have been teaching a quarter-long compiler construction course where students implement an interpreter for a variant of the XML query language XQuery. Our goal is to motivate students' interest in the course by exposing them to an interesting and powerful new language which they see as relevant to potential future experiences.In this paper, we first explain the workings of the course itself, and then describe some pedagogically interesting variants of the XQuery language. We close with a discussion of challenges faced and conclusions.

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A compiler for teaching about compilers

Cited by 24 publications

References 8 publications

Defense against the Dark Arts

Defense against the Dark Arts

Making compiler construction projects relevant to core curriculums

Building an XQuery interpreter in a compiler construction course

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