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CS 6120: Advanced Compilers: The Self-Guided Online Course

461 points · 102 comments · 2 years ago · swatson741

cs.cornell.edu

mnafees2 years ago
This course single-handedly became the reason for me to clear interviews at all the compiler engineering teams of MANGA (Meta, Apple, NVIDIA, Google, Amazon) companies when I was searching for my first full-time job while completing my Bachelors. My University's (University of Waterloo) curriculum around low-level computing systems was already par excellent, and of'course I was also contributing to open source compiler projects. But this course really helped me answer some of the toughest questions during my interviews!
mgaunard2 years ago
Before writing compilers, I think it's best to understand computer architectures, and what needs to be generated by the compiler to yield the most efficient machine code.
Unfortunately, in my experience, computer architecture and even systems programming are domains that schools/universities appear to systematically increasingly de-prioritize, presumably because it is seen as too technical.
That knowledge however is instrumental in landing some of the best jobs in the industry.
fear912 years ago
There doesn't seem to be a good in-depth academic resource for advanced compiler optimization. I've searched a lot and all the courses I found were introductory, the actual interesting techniques require diving deep into the source code of popular OSS compilers. I found that quite surprising.
simonebrunozzi2 years ago
Compilers is one of these field that didn't evolve much for ~30 years. I used to teach a course at Perugia University back in 2004-2006, and the material I could use was easily 15-20-25 years old, no sweat.
Things seem to have changed recently.
rrgok2 years ago
I'm glad this exists. Now I can follow a guided course into advanced topics at my own pace. I've always wanted to have a career as a Compiler Engineer, but sadly, where I live doesn't offer much in terms of education and job opportunities. Looking at the USA, the job market is overwhelmingly competitive, and I honestly don't know how to get into it. The only experience I have is a course I did during my Bachelor's, and I loved every bit of it.
pjmlp2 years ago
Great to see that also have "A Unified Theory of Garbage Collection", at least these students will get the right picture on RC versus tracing GC.
dunefox2 years ago
CS 6120 is a PhD-level Cornell CS course by Adrian Sampson on programming language implementation.
So, is it very advanced then? I don't think I'm at PhD level when it comes to CS.
riedel2 years ago
I looks like this is still basically most of the stuff covered by the normal compiler construction course I attended held by Gerhard Goos 20 years ago. It links some newer papers, so I might have a look. I liked the book by Steven Muchnick 'Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation' . I have to admit that after 18 years not having looked at compiler source code, I feel not up to speed particularly with a lot of profiling and path based optimisations. Also I guess some more advanced SIMD stuff must be out there looking at all the ML.
terrelln2 years ago
I went through this course online a few summers ago, and learned a ton. I highly recommend it!
It was very engaging to put up PRs for small issues in the Bril IR, and work with the professor to fix them.
Delta2312 years ago
I wonder if there's a predecessor course to this
dfgdfg345454562 years ago
Is there a course like this but for pure functional languages?
tripdout2 years ago
I favorited this last year and still didn't get around to it. But from what I saw of one of the videos, it looks really good, super interesting stuff.
fancyfredbot2 years ago
Compilers seem a great target for AI. Whole program optimisation using reinforcement learning could be massive, there's plenty of data, and collecting more data is relatively cheap. The course touches on superoptimisers but these don't really use AI. I think a change is coming in this space
jokoon2 years ago
If you want to build a parser, I recommend Lexy, it's a parser combinator.
It's a bit difficult to use because it makes extensive use of templates.
kungfupawnda2 years ago
does this course come with the labs? if so how can we test that our compiler is working?

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39577878