Exactly. Just start from the beginning and work through each problem as you get to it. Keep the scope small and iterate. You'll probably find yourself wanting to start from scratch a lot once you learn how to do it better, that's ok.
I'm writing up a tutorial for my students right now. It is just a stripped down dialect of BASIC. I think seeing the entire compiler process from start to finish on a tiny language is what helped me the most.
Thanks! First time reading Byte mag. Kinda almost half century late :)
The article is written with amazing (these days) clarity. Kinda coincided with my current interest in LLVM. Nice to see this article also be coming from UofI Urbana-Champaign grads.
Reportedly the article series misses implementation of one component - run-time, which is needed in order to fully replicate it now. Well, anyway, reading on!
I'm writing up a tutorial for my students right now. It is just a stripped down dialect of BASIC. I think seeing the entire compiler process from start to finish on a tiny language is what helped me the most.