Programs that manipulate other programs are powerful, interesting and fun. I’ll use Ruby to take you on a tour of how interpreters and compilers work, introduce the ideas behind a technique called partial evaluation, and explain a surprising computer science result which allows compilers to be generated automatically. - Codon / [HN]

Here be dragons / compiler books

• interpreter
• compiler
• partial evaluator

• Futamura projections

• Why is it that 35 years after the Futamura projections were first described, when we want to produce a new compiler, we don’t write an interpreter and pass it through a high quality, general partial evaluator?
  • As far as I know, it has been tried numerous times and has been an area of active research in the past, but results turned out unsuccessful.
    • TruffleRuby is a Ruby implementation that works exactly by writing an interpreting and passing it through a general partial evaluator. It’s successful enough to pass almost all the Ruby spec and to run real Ruby applications including their C extensions. TruffleRuby

# see also

• Tower of interpreter
• How I developed a faster Ruby interpreter
• Using C++ as a scripting language
• Lessons from Writing a Compiler
• Bootstrapping a simple compiler from nothing (2002)
• Common Misconceptions about Compilers / HN