The Dragon Book

I finally got my hands on the Bible of all compilers, The Dragon Book. Yep, it’s over 1,000 pages of pure knowledge and covers basically all one would ever want to know about how to make a high-end compiler for modern programming languages. The real name of this epic tome is “Compilers – principles, techniques, and tools”, but the reason why it’s called “The Dragon Book” derives from its cover illustration: There’s a dragon and a knight fighting each other. Inside, however, wall of 8pt text crits you for over 9,000! The books was originally written back in the 80’s, but the fresh second edition was published in 2006. This newer, updated version is the one I currently have.

Greedily I started munching the text, and to my surprise, I noticed that the described techniques are exactly how I’ve been writing the V3 compiler. Good. I probably won’t build the V3 compiler all by the guidelines of this book because there’s way too much information for me to handle at this point. But hey, I can always improve the compiler as I learn more and advance through this book. Mark Sibly (head programmer of Blitz 3D) once said, “When I was making my first compiler I couldn’t understand half the material (books) I had.” I can’t remember what the exact quote was, but you get the idea. I have a feeling that this book will serve me well in the future 😉