Is there a more modern, OO version of “Let's Build a Compiler”? [closed]

Answer 1

I have recently built a compiler at my company using BNFC, at first I was instructed to use Flex and Bison (C/C++) but I found them to be a pain so I used BNFC to generate the Flex and Bison files.

Can't say I liked the code, my grammar was pretty big and so was the generated visitor but nothing I couldn't handle, I TDDed from the beginning so I always had enough tests to refactor and but I also kept a UML diagram to help me think about the additional classes I wrote.

There actually is a book called Implementing Programming Languages self described as "a self-study book, and to some extent, a manual to the BNFC tool" had I read it I would probably have struggled less with implementation decisions but overall I found BNFC to be intuitive enough to be able to use it by only reading the manual and the tutorial

Last but not least, it can also be used with other languages including Java (with Cup and JLex)

Answer 2

Take a look at Terence Parr's "Language Implementation Patterns". He wrote ANTLR - a parser generator for Java - so knows his stuff. It explains the principles of compiler design really well and builds up gradually.

Martin Fowler's "Domain Specific Languages" is also good. It has a slightly different agenda than being a pure compilers course, but is a good reference on the key concepts of language design.

Answer 3

Have you taken a look at the PyPy project? It is a Python implementation of the Python language. Maybe it can provide some inspiration for your goal of self-bootstrapping Java?