On the task of writing a compiler in a new language:
This may be cheating as far as the idea of writing a compiler would help in successfully learning a new language, and please accept my apologies if this is a silly question - I am a student and I should have probably asked my CS lecturer, but do any (little or large) languages come with a parser generator suitable for creating an XML parser or language parser?
I have just started reading the 'Dragon book' Principles of Compiler Design by Aho and Ullman, and while much of it is going over my head, the tools lex and yacc seem to be amazing tools, that I would like in whatever language I end up using. Am I overestimating the value of such tools, or are they unsuitable to be included as part of a language?
Stephen De Gabrielle
NT University (student)
> What strategies do you use for becoming proficient in a new language?
>
> Don't forget P.J. Plauger's approach: "My approach to learning a programming
> language is to write a compiler for it." (The C User's Journal, October 1993).
> I do something similar, except I have a small pile of simple languages for
> which I write compilers in the language I'm learning (an edison compiler in
> java, most recently).