Lesson 1: Welcome & Overview

Gist

Welcome to CS 6120! I’m really excited for the semester.
What is a compiler, and why should we care?
- A simplistic answer is all about making programs go fast. And optimization is important, but compare Moore’s law to Proebsting’s law.
- This class is about language implementation more broadly. What else goes into a good language implementation other than optimizations? (Not parsing.) Post your ideas in the discussion topic.
- New languages + new hardware = lots of interesting problems.
Course overview and the syllabus.
- 6120 is kind of an experimental course anyway, and this semester it’s going to be even weirder.
- We’re trying a mostly-flipped model where the synchronous portion is primarily about quietly hacking and asking questions, and the primary content delivery mechanism consists of lessons like the one you’re looking at now.
- Communication will be on Zulip. Sign up and stay on top of it!
- Lessons, tasks, and projects.
- Hacking sessions.
- This website and the blog, including the GitHub repository where you’ll send PRs. Work for 6120 is “real,” open source, and for the world.
- “Michelin star” grading.
- Policies, academic integrity, respect, accessibility.
Debugging the course structure.
- Ask questions about the course setup in this lesson’s discussion topic!
- Your first task is below: introduce yourself in the introductions topic right now.
- When you’ve done that, submit the L1 marker assignment on CMS.

Read the syllabus! Seriously, please actually read it.
Sign up for Zulip and introduce yourself in the introductions topic.
Pick a paper from the schedule whose discussion you want to lead. Claim it by opening a pull request that modifies content.toml to fill in your name on one of the leader = "TK" lines. (Feel free to ask questions about the papers on Zulip to help you decide!)
Submit any text file you like to the L1 CMS assignment to indicate that you’ve done the introduction and claimed a paper.