Fall 2023, 3 credits. Instructor: Prof. Tiark Rompf

Announcements will be posted on Piazza. Homework submission and grading will be done through Brightspace.

Lectures are Tuesday and Thursday, 3:00-4:15pm in LWSN B151. As the Pandemic situation evolves the mode of lecture delivery might need to change. Please keep an eye on the announcements on Piazza.

Teaching assistants are:

• Anxhelo Xhebraj, axhebraj@purdue.edu
• Songlin Jia, jia137@purdue.edu

Office hours will be held on Tuesday, 5-6pm, at HAAS 143.

Midterm will be held on Thu Oct 5th.

Final (see details in myPurdue): 1-3pm, Tues, Dec 12th, LILY 3418

About the Course

In a nutshell: The theory and practice of programming language translation, compilation, and run-time systems, organized around a significant programming project to build a compiler for a simple but non-trivial programming language.

Parts of the class are based on the Advanced Compiler Construction class taught by Michel Schinz at EPFL. The corresponding class materials (lecture slides, programming assignments, etc) are used with permission.

Grades: Final grades will be based on results for the programming assignments (50%), midterm (20%), and final exam (30%). Achieving a minimum of 20% in each of the three components is mandatory for a passing grade.

Late Work Policy: No late submission will be accepted. Exceptions will be given only in the most extreme circumstances. Any travel, including interview trips, load from work or other classes, or simply not being able to get your program to run will not be grounds for extensions or exceptions.

Academic integrity: For general policies about academic integrity etc. Please see here. You are expected to read that page and will be held accountable according to its contents.

Recommended Books

• Modern compiler implementation in Java, Second Edition, Andrew W. Appel, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
• An Incremental Approach to Compiler Construction, Abdulaziz Ghuloum, 2006.
• Engineering a Compiler, Second Edition, Keith D. Cooper, Linda Torczon, 2007.
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools, Aho, Lam, Sethi, Ullman, Addison-Wesley, 2007.

Supplementary Resources

• Scala Cheatsheet
• x86_64 Cheatsheet

Lecture Notes

A set of lecture notes is available here:

• Post-Modern Compiler Design

Slides

Week 1

• Introduction to Compilers (pdf)
• Operator precedence and Tokenization (pdf)

Week 2

• Error handling - Semantics - Branches (pdf)
• Variables - Loops - Type Checking (pdf)

Week 3

• Type Checking/Inference - Functions (pdf)
• Functions - Arrays (pdf)

Week 4-5

• Intermediate Representations (pdf)

Week 6-8

• Values Representation (pdf)
• Closure Conversion (pdf)

Week 9

• Optimizations (pdf)

Week 10

• Dataflow Analysis (pdf)

Week 11-13

• Register Allocation (pdf)

Week 14-15

• Interpreters And Virtual Machines (pdf)
• Memory Management (pdf)

Week 16

• Object-Oriented Languages (pdf)

Projects

• Project 1: Arithmetic (due 11:59pm Sunday Aug 27)
• Project 2: Branches, Loops, and Error Handling (due 11:59pm Sunday Sep 3)
• Project 3: Type Checking - Functions - Heap Allocation (due 11:59pm Sunday Sep 17)
• Project 4: CMScala to CPS Translation (due 11:59pm Sunday Oct 1)
• Project 5: Value Representation (due 11:59pm Sunday Oct 29)
• Project 6: Optimization (due 11:59pm Sunday Nov 12)
• Project 7: Garbage Collection (due 11:59pm Sunday Dec 3)