Language Implementation Patterns

One thing I am constantly thinking about is programming languages: implementing them, designing them, using them. The latter two are just fun, but implementing languages is a tricky business, and can be difficult and time-consuming.

There are some tools for helping you implement a language, such as the classical lex and yacc lexical analyzer and parser generator, respectively, or the more modern ANTLR, a combination of both.

However, learning how to even use these tools, or when to, is also difficult. Enter Language Implementation Patterns. This book, by Terence Parr (inventor of ANTLR, no less), attempts, quite successfully, to introduce the common patterns that you will use in implementing a language, with or without a parser-generator like ANTLR.

Most of all, I say that it is about freaking time for a book like this to come out. Compiler books have been mostly stagnating these past few years, and while this doesn't cover some of the more advanced optimization techniques and the like, it does a thorough job of showing how modern compilers are built. Bravo, Terence.