Writing that changed how I think about programming languages
a year ago
- #optimization
- #compilers
- #programming-languages
- Andy Wingo's simple semi-space collector made Cheney/copying/compacting garbage collectors practical and understandable.
- CF Bolz-Tereick's 'Implementing a Toy Optimizer' introduced forwarding pointers for instruction rewrites, replacing find-and-replace methods.
- CF Bolz-Tereick's 'A Knownbits Abstract Domain for the Toy Optimizer, Correctly' used Z3 as a proof engine and verifier for Python code.
- Chris Fallin's 'Cranelift, Part 3: Correctness in Register Allocation' advocated proving correctness on a single input for meaningful crashes or correct allocations.
- Russ Cox's 'Regular Expression Matching: the Virtual Machine Approach' demystified regex engines and coroutines with a 50-line implementation.
- Andrej Karpathy's 'micrograd' provided a library-free neural network implementation, making machine learning more accessible.
- Fil Pizlo's 'How I implement SSA form' introduced an Identity tag for union-find, saving space and introducing Phi/Upsilon form and TBAA-style heap effects.
- Fil Pizlo's 'Speculation in JavaScriptCore' detailed JSC's optimizer workings and Fil's optimization philosophy.
- Chandler Carruth's 'Modernizing Compiler Design for Carbon Toolchain' explained aggressive compile-time budgets and per-layer compiler architecture.
- Allison Kaptur's 'A Python Interpreter Written in Python' clarified bytecode interpreters and CPython internals.
- Eli Bendersky's 'Parsing expressions by precedence climbing' offered an easier alternative to recursive descent parsers.
- Takashi Kokubun's 'Ruby JIT Challenge' showcased a novel approach to register allocation using a virtual stack of physical registers.
- Abdulaziz Ghuloum's 'An Incremental Approach to Compiler Construction' simplified compilers into single-pass, feature-by-feature implementations.
- Fernando Borretti's 'Lessons from Writing a Compiler' highlighted a stripey implementation strategy for compilers.
- The 'egg: Fast and extensible equality saturation' paper expanded optimizer thinking by generating all expression versions and selecting the best.
- Chris Fallin's 'Cranelift: Using E-Graphs for Verified, Cooperating Middle-End Optimizations' demonstrated e-graphs' practicality in production compilers.
- Phil Zucker's 'Acyclic Egraphs and Smart Constructors' explored acyclic egraphs, with insights deepening over time.
- Bob Nystrom's Reddit comment and Adrian Sampson's 'Flattening ASTs' discussed compact AST storage and parallel abstract interpretation possibilities.