This tutorial introduces the participants to the joys of teaching and learning about compilers using the incremental approach. The tutorial provides a sneak-preview of a compiler course based on the new textbooks from MIT Press, “Essentials of Compilation: An Incremental Approach in Racket/Python”. The course takes students on a journey through constructing their own compiler for a small but powerful language. The standard approach to describing and teaching compilers is to proceed one pass at a time, from the front to the back of the compiler. Unfortunately, that approach obfuscates how language features motivate design choices in a compiler. In this course we instead take an incremental approach in which we build a complete compiler every two weeks, starting with a small input language that includes only arithmetic and variables. We add new language features in subsequent iterations, extending the compiler as necessary. Student get immediate positive feedback as they see their compiler passing test cases and then learn important lessons regarding software engineering as they grow and refactor their compiler throughout the semester.

Instructions for participants can be found at the following web page:

https://iucompilercourse.github.io/tutorial-web-page/

Jeremy Siek is a Professor at Indiana University Bloomington. Jeremy’s areas of research include programming language design, type systems, mechanized theorem proving using proof assistants, and optimizing compilers. Jeremy’s Ph.D. thesis explored foundations for constrained templates, aka the “concepts” proposal for C++. Prior to that, Jeremy developed the Boost Graph Library, a C++ generic library for graph algorithms and data structures. Jeremy post-doc’d at Rice University where he developed the idea of gradual typing: a type system that integrates both dynamic and static typing in the same programming language. Jeremy is currently working on several open questions regarding gradual typing. Is the polymorphic blame calculus really parametric? How should gradual typing be combined with other features such as dependent types? What is the formal criteria for gradually typed languages? Is it possible to create a high-performance implementation of a gradually-typed languages? In 2009 Jeremy received the NSF CAREER award to fund his project: “Bridging the Gap Between Prototyping and Production”. In 2010 and again in 2015, Jeremy was awarded a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship from the Scottish Informatics & Computer Science Alliance.